


dream come true

by phantomfantaaa



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Bitty getting bullied, Canon-Compliant, Drinking, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Homophobia, Jack’s character development makes me emo, Jack’s overdose, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multiple Pov, Mutual Pining, Platonic soulmates to lovers, Shitty is the best bro in the world, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, Soulmate AU, Tethered dreams, Trope Subversion, content warnings: substance abuse, discussions and POV of anxiety, discussions of slurs, oblivious idiots to lovers, yes these all apply to this single ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24730822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomfantaaa/pseuds/phantomfantaaa
Summary: Bitty knows that most soulmates are platonic, but he’s always been a bit of a romantic, and a small voice in his head still hopes to be one of the rare exceptions. And even though romance probably isn’t what’s going on here, he’s still enamored by the awkward, anxious robot hockey prince in his dreams.When Jack sleeps at night, he can make room in his heart for one more person: a five-foot-six Southern boy who bakes as well as he skates. But when he’s awake, hockey is the only thing on Jack’s mind, and he’ll be damned if this tiny-ass frog (who can’t even check) gets in the way of his NHL dreams.-----Soulmate/tethered dreams AU that is somehow still canon compliant. That’s right folks, you get to see dream Bitty and Jack fall in love AND canon Bitty and Jack fall in love.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 14
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The premise of this fic is what happens when hanibeee tells me to write a Zimbits soulmates/tethered dreams AU, but I don’t want to enforce the idea of romantic love being the most important and singular kind of “soulmate love” because the greatest loves in my life have always been my friends and communities. In my opinion, Check, Please! is ultimately about college, friendship, and found family, and Zimbits has always felt like so much more than just romantic love. So soulmates in this universe are mostly platonic (but there are rare exceptions hehe). The in-universe rules about soulmates don’t really make sense so don’t think too hard about it.  
> Also, Shitty’s characterization in this fic is just a big love letter to all my friends in college who were the Shitty to my Jack.
> 
> Content warnings: substance abuse, drinking, Jack’s overdose, discussions and POV of anxiety, mental health issues, homophobia, Bitty getting bullied, discussions of slurs  
> Credits to Ngozi for sections of the dialogue that I ripped straight from the comic!

_ Bitty is thirteen when the dreams start.  _

_ It’s familiar enough, at first. He’s gliding on ice, one foot pushing in front of the other, a chill whipping past his face. He expects to hear Katya yell out the next drill, but when he looks up, he realizes he’s never been here before. This rink is completely unfamiliar. He looks back down and his skates are different, too—bulkier and sturdier than his slim figure skates.  _

He wakes up and blinks his eyes until the ceiling comes into focus. He can’t remember much, but he knows he was just dreaming, and it felt more vivid than any dream he’s ever had. 

***

Jack wakes up with a jolt, and his heart is racing. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, trying to regulate the thudding in his chest. Safe behind the darkness of his eyelids, he can remember parts of his dream. Well, he can’t  _ really _ remember anything about it, but he remembers that he  _ had _ a dream, which is strange because he normally doesn’t dream. He remembers warmth. He remembers feeling at peace. 

A voice carries up the stairs and interrupts his silence. “Jack, honey, are you awake yet? Come downstairs for breakfast!” 

Jack opens his eyes and sits up, then he reaches over to the orange bottle on his nightstand and shakes out a pill. He swallows with a dry throat, long used to taking his anxiety medication without water. He shuffles down the stairs and makes his way into the kitchen to see Maman bustling around with plates of breakfast. There’s a banner hung against the wall that says “Happy 18th Birthday!” He smiles at Maman, and wonders whether that faint peach smell is coming from the cake sitting on the table. 

***

_ They don’t actually meet for a month.  _

_ Up until then, Bitty had only experienced random bits and snippets of scenes. Most of them were on ice, usually at that same rink, and Bitty had figured out by now that he was dreaming as some sort of hockey player. This time, though, he’s in an endless white space. He’s still standing on ice, but it stretches into the distance, and that’s when he sees him. A chill crawls up his spine, and with anticipation, he starts walking toward the figure. Once he’s close enough, he hesitantly calls out.  _

_ “Hello?” _

_ The boy’s head whips around, and Bitty stares into the bluest eyes he has ever seen.  _

_ “Who are you?”  _

_ Bitty crosses his arms in front of his chest and huffs. “I asked you first.”  _

_ The boy glances around, and his eyes settle on a spot near the floor. “I’m Jack.”  _

_ “So are you a figment of my imagination, or is this one of those soulmate things?”  _

_ “Euh...what are you talking about? This is kind of a weird dream.” The boy—Jack, Bitty reminds himself—frowns a little. “Wait, what do you mean by soulmate?” _

_ “Yeah, you know, soulmates? I guess we’re platonic soulmates, since we’re both…” Bitty falters for a second. “Erm, since we’re both guys. But that’s pretty normal, right?” _

_ Jack’s frown deepens. “Wait, so, you’re saying soulmates are real?”  _

_ “Have you never heard of this? Soulmates and dream tethers and stuff?”  _

_ “I may have heard about it once or twice, but honestly, I don’t pay much attention to anything outside of hockey.”  _

_ “That makes sense,” Bitty laughs, “I’ve been having these dreams—I assume now that they were your memories—where I’m ice skating, but instead of figure skating, I’m playing hockey.”  _

_ Pink begins to bloom on Jack’s cheeks, and Bitty thinks it’s quite endearing. “I guess you’re a figure skater then? I had a dream the other week that was the same, but reversed.”  _

_ Bitty opens his mouth and begins to reply, but before he can actually speak, his vision starts to fade, and the dream ends.  _

When he wakes up, Bitty’s mouth is dry and his heart is in his throat. He just met his soulmate in a tethered dream. He can’t remember the boy’s face or even his name, but he just knows it. He tries to list the things he does know: well, it’s a boy. Who plays hockey. Bitty sighs to himself; he can’t help but be a little disappointed that his soulmate is probably straight, if the hockey thing was anything to judge by. It’s rare to have a romantic soulmate, but Bitty’s always been a sucker for romance. 

***

Jack is sweating all over, hair plastered to his forehead, and he can hear the blood rushing in his ears. Pieces of his dream become clearer and start to fall into place. It’s definitely the most vivid dream so far, and he thinks about the three other dreams he’s had this month. He recalls some vague feelings, but not much—lots of warmth, some baking, and one where he was skating. His brain conjures a memory from last night: a voice he can’t quite place,  _ Have you never heard of this? Soulmates and dream tethers and stuff?  _

He rolls over to unplug his phone, pulls up Google, and types in “soulmate dream.” He clicks on the first link and starts reading the Wikipedia article. 

_ A  _ **_soulmate_ ** _ is a person with whom one has feelings of deep or natural affinity. This may involve similarity, love, platonic relationships, comfort, intimacy, romance, spirituality, compatibility, and trust.  _

_ In current usage, the term “soulmate” typically refers to a deep platonic—but in some rare cases, romantic—partner, with the implication of an exclusive lifelong bond. It commonly holds the connotation of being the strongest bond with another person that one can achieve. It is commonly accepted that one will feel 'complete' once they have found their soulmate, as it is partially in the perceived definition that two souls are meant to unite. The term "soulmate" first appeared in the English language in a letter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1822. _

_ Not everyone has soulmates, but those who do will share “tethered” dreams with their soulmate. The exact science is still widely undiscovered, and there is still much about tethered dreams that remains unknown. Studies have shown that these dreams can appear at any point in a person’s life, and these tethered dreams occur as rarely as a few times throughout a person’s life or as frequently as multiple times a week. Ability to remember details varies from person to person, but there have been no reports of people’s ability to remember identifying details from dreams such as soulmates’ names or faces. According to the personal accounts of soulmates, tethered dreams will cease once both people learn that they are each other’s soulmates.  _

So Jack apparently has a soulmate. He has a million thoughts racing through his mind, but he can’t focus on any of them. Was his soulmate straight? Well, Jack’s pretty sure he bakes...but Jack can’t judge people using stereotypes like that. The guy was probably his platonic soulmate, since the article said that romantic soulmates were rare. Jack’s pretty sure romantic love isn’t on the table for him anyways, and even if he does settle down with someone one day, it’d have to be a woman if the draft goes as planned and he starts his career in the NHL. All things considered, it could be worse. He could probably use another friend. With his entire life dedicated to hockey, Jack’s only real friend is Kent. He thinks about Kent, feels a flicker of sadness, then reminds himself that  _ whatever _ that’s going on between him and Parse is strictly casual. Or so Parse says. Sometimes, though, Jack swears… But before he can go any deeper in his thoughts, Jack’s spiraling anxiety is interrupted by a knock on his door. 

“Jack? Tu devrais partir bientôt, sinon tu seras en retard pour la pratique,” Papa’s muffled voice calls through the door. 

“D’accord, Papa.” 

***

_ It’s been six months. The dreams come and go; sometimes they’re more frequent, and sometimes they don’t come for weeks at a time. Bitty gets to know Jack better, little by little. He’s private and doesn’t share a lot about himself, but Bitty can glean bits and pieces of a personality. He’s kind of awkward. Thankfully, Bitty’s Southern charm is just enough to keep the conversation going, but Bitty often wonders how they’re supposed to be each other’s best friends if he always has to hold the conversation. Yet at the same time, it feels indescribably easy and familiar. Even when their discussions wind down to a prolonged silence, it doesn’t feel that uncomfortable.  _

_ This time, they’re sitting on the ice, same as always. They’ve started playing the question game—Bitty’s suggestion—to keep the conversation flowing. _

_ “Ooh I’ve got one. What’s something you’ve never told anyone?”  _

_ “Like a secret?” _

_ “Yeah! It doesn’t have to be your deepest, darkest secret, but yeah.”  _

_ Jack picks at a loose thread at the hem of his shirt. “You go first.”  _

_ “Fine,” Bitty huffs. He thinks for a second. “I use my aunt’s jam recipe.”  _

_ Jack snorts. “Seriously, Bittle? That’s your secret?” _

_ Bitty leans over to shove Jack’s shoulder and laughs. “I’ll have you know that my mother and her sister have had a twenty-year feud over whose recipe is better. It started when they were teenagers, actually. Mama had used Grand-MooMaw’s recipe, and she won first place at the County Fair, but Aunt Judy started a rumor that it was only because the judge had a crush on Mama. The next year, Aunt Judy decided to enter the County Fair as well, and they both tied for first place by a hair. Mama had borrowed Grand-MooMaw’s only handwritten copy of the recipe, and she swears that Aunt Judy stole it. Honestly, though, I think it was just the inevitable result of a lifelong sibling rivalry and Southern women weaponizing food preparation.”  _

_ Jack lets out a low whistle. “I guess it runs in the family, then.”  _

_ “What’s that supposed to mean?”  _

_ “I’m just saying, Bittle, you can get a little intense about your pie fillings.”  _

_ “That’s because it’s important! You have to pick the perfect one, and it all depends on what vibe you’re trying to go for, to be honest. For example, a pumpkin pie would be perfect for a fall potluck, but a pecan pie is ideal for a nice-to-meet-you-for-the-first-time situation.” By the time Bitty finishes, Jack is grinning at him. Bitty sighs, resigned. “Alright, I guess you’re right. What about you, though? You haven’t answered yet.”  _

_ Jack pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, as if he’s deep in thought. After a few seconds, he finally speaks. “Sometimes I take more of my anxiety meds than I’m supposed to. When everything feels like too much. It makes everything else go quiet for a bit so I can focus better.” _

_ Bitty hand reaches out and softly settles on Jack’s knee, and he hears his own voice waver. “Oh Jack, honey, I’m really sorry to hear that.”  _

_ “It’s alright.” Jack shakes his head a bit and gives a hollow laugh. “I’ve been dealing with it for a long time. Everything just feels like it might be too much, sometimes. A lot of the time. It’s a lot of pressure, and I’m also trying to figure out some…” Jack pauses. “...personal stuff.”  _

_ Bitty’s vision fades as Jack finishes his sentence, and he braces himself to wake up.  _

_ *** _

Jack snaps his wrist and sends the puck flying across the ice only to have it completely miss his winger. He groans in frustration, tries to shake it off, and charges forward to check the D-man blocking his way. His anxiety is particularly bad today—he had to take three pills just to drive to practice—and he always struggles to focus the morning after he has one of those stupid tethered dreams. But he  _ has  _ to stay focused right now because some GMs are coming to the next game, and he needs to make a good impression if he wants to get drafted into the NHL this year. 

Once practice is finally over, Jack gets into his car and slams the door shut. His mind is a swirling mess of thoughts about missed shots, lost games, the upcoming draft, letting everyone down. He reaches into his bag, pulls out his bottle of meds, and pours a single pill into his shaking hand. And a second, just in case. He swallows the pills as he takes out his phone and sends a text to Kent. 

_ What are you doing right now?  _

He gets a reply almost instantly. 

_ Same as you, about to drive home. You tryna come over?  _

Jack quickly types out  _ Yeah, see you soon  _ and starts the car. Less than fifteen minutes later, he’s at Parse’s apartment with a six pack of beer. They order takeout, laugh over drinks. Parse doesn’t ask what’s wrong, and Jack doesn’t tell him about the dreams. Eventually, the beer is replaced by stronger liquor; Jack’s comfortably drunk, and mixed with his meds (he took another one in the bathroom a few hours ago just to calm his stomach), his body feels blissfully numb. As the sky darkens, the talking stops and is replaced by more physical activities, and Jack goes through the motions that feel like routine by now. He’s too numb to feel anything, or even care. It’s casual. It’s just sex. Parse is just his teammate, just his friend. This thing between them… It’s complicated. They finish and are too exhausted to bother cleaning up, and Kent starts to softly snore within minutes. Jack closes his eyes, but the thoughts start to clutter his vision, so he reaches over the edge of the bed and fishes out the bottle from his pants on the floor. When he finally falls asleep, he feels Kent throw an arm over his waist and pull him closer. 

_ It’s the ice, as usual. Jack walks over to Bittle and sits down next to him. Bittle looks up and smiles, and Jack can’t help but feel the warmth radiating from him.  _

_ “Good to see you again, Mr. Zimmermann.” He gives Jack a second to get settled. “So, what do you want to talk about today?” _

_ “I had a pretty rough day today. Don’t feel like talking much. Why don’t you tell me a story?”  _

_ “Well, what kind of story do you want to hear?”  _

_ “Tell me about the first time you baked.”  _

_ Bittle’s grin stretches even further. “Gosh, that was so long ago, I don’t know if I can really remember it. I was probably three or four, but I think I was at MooMaw’s house. I remember her showing me how to make a pie crust, folding the dough and rolling it out, over and over again.” Bittle starts talking faster and getting more animated as the memories come back. “I got to pick the filling. It was a cherry pie, I think. And then she taught me how to make a lattice top, and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world…”  _

_ Jack lets Bittle ramble on about his childhood memories and different pie top crusts, and it feels easy. Jack appreciates that Bittle can talk a lot because it puts less pressure on him to talk. He never really knows what to say, anyways. By the time his focus returns to the conversation, he realizes that Bittle has stopped talking.  _

_ “Euh sorry, I zoned out for a second there. What was that, again?”  _

_ “Oh, I was just asking what your earliest memory was.”  _

_ “It was probably falling on my ass while learning how to skate with my dad. I think I was two or so, could barely even walk yet.”  _

_ “Wow. Hockey’s always been a pretty big part of your life, huh?”  _

_ “Yeah. I’ve been playing as long as I can remember. When your dad is Bad Bob Zimmermann, people have a lot of high expectations for you from the start.”  _

_ “Gosh, that sounds rough.” Bittle’s smile turns sad. “My dad would probably do anything for me to play a contact sport, even hockey. Too bad he got stuck with a kid who preferred figure skating. He even tried to make me do football when I was little, but that didn’t really work out.”  _

_ Jack’s vision suddenly fades away, and Bittle’s probably experiencing the same because he softly whispers a “See you next time” before everything turns black. _

Jack wakes up to sunlight streaming through the window and a warm body pressed against his back. He turns around and is face-to-face with a sleeping Kent Parson, and he takes a moment to study the length of Kent’s nose, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his lips. His hair, golden blonde, is disheveled against the dark pillowcase. Jack lifts his hand to brush the fallen strands away from Kent’s eyes, but hesitates at the last second and stops himself. His stomach twists, and he knows it’s because of the tethered dream he had last night. The face of his soulmate lingers in his memory—he can’t pinpoint any specific features, but his gut knows that it isn’t Parse. The knot in his stomach morphs into a flutter, and he doesn’t know whether he’s disappointed or relieved that his soulmate isn’t the boy sleeping next to him. 

***

Bitty’s tethered dreams have increased in frequency in the past month, and he’s had dreams nearly every night for the last two weeks. Things are going well with his soulmate in the dream-world—well, he assumes so, if the daily morning butterflies in his stomach are anything to go by. He wonders what it will feel like when he finally meets his soulmate in person. 

_ “How do you think it’s gonna feel when we see each other for the first time?” _

_ “What makes you think we’ll know we’re soulmates right when we meet?”  _

_ They’re sitting in front of each other on the ice, Bitty’s cheek propped against his palm, finger absentmindedly swirling patterns on the frost. “I guess I’ve always been a bit of a romantic, even with platonic soulmates, thinking that something will just click when we see each other for the first time. Like, we’ll just  _ know _.”  _

_ “You talk about life like it’s a movie.” Jack’s laugh fills Bitty’s chest with warmth. “We won’t know for sure until it happens, I guess. But I get what you mean. There’s this— I’m sort of seeing someone in real life… But I can just tell that my soulmate is someone else, even though I don’t even remember what you look like when I’m awake.”  _

_ Bitty tries to not let his heart drop when Jack says he has a girlfriend. Romantic soulmates are rare _ ,  _ he reminds himself, but a boy can dream, and he’s still disappointed. He tries to tell himself that it’s okay, that he’ll still find love one day, even if most people in his hometown think that gay people are sinners who go to hell.  _

_ “Yeah. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”  _

Bitty started a habit of keeping mental tabs on which nights he has tethered dreams. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…today is Sunday, and he didn’t have a dream last night, which means the dreams happened four days in a row, the longest streak he’s ever had. He absentmindedly wanders into the kitchen to join Mama, wondering if he’ll dream again tonight. He’s broken out of his daydream when he hears Coach call his name, so he presses a quick kiss to Mama’s cheek and makes his way to the living room. As he gets closer, he can hear the drone of the ESPN Sunday Night Highlights sports commentator on the TV. 

_...son of NHL legend and four-time Stanley Cup champion Bad Bob Zimmermann is currently hospitalized and in critical condition after a rumored drug overdose last night. He was recently predicted to be the top NHL draft pick next—  _

“Hey Coach, you called?”

Coach switches off the TV once Bitty walks through the doorway and nods at the couch next to his armchair, indicating for Bitty to sit. 

“Dicky, I wanted to talk to ya about what’s happening at school.” 

Bitty’s palms start to sweat, and he picks at his cuticles (a nervous habit from childhood). He knows what Coach is going to say, but he doesn’t want to sit through another one of these interventions, so he stays quiet. Coach awkwardly clears his throat and speaks again.

“I know you’ve been having a rough time, and those boys pick on ya because you’re small. But you gotta fight back, let them know you’re a man who can’t be pushed around. Gotta show that you’re not one of those sissy wimp boys.” 

Bitty winces when Coach says  _ sissy wimp boys _ , silently praying for this conversation to end soon. He wishes he could be strong like the boys on Coach’s team, but he could never will his body to fight—it was always his flight instinct that kicked in, or worse, his instinct to freeze. Besides, Bitty’s pretty sure that the boys at school aren’t shoving him in the hallways and cornering him in bathrooms and throwing slurs in the P.E. locker room because he was six inches shorter than them. 

“Now son, do you hear me?” 

“Yes, Coach.” Bitty eyes are fixed to his hands in his lap, unable to meet his father’s eyes.

“So what are you gonna do about those boys next time they try to hit you?”

“I’m gonna fight back.” He knows it’s a lie and bites the inside of his cheek.

Coach nods his head and grunts in approval. “That’s right. Like a man.” 

“Yes, Coach.” 

Bitty is saved from the bitter silence when Mama calls him to come help with her pie. She gives him a pained smile when he joins her, and Bitty returns it, a silent  _ thank you _ for rescuing him from the conversation with Coach. He knows she doesn’t actually need help with pie (she’s been making them longer than Bitty has been alive), but she doesn’t say anything except to ask Bitty to peel and slice apples for the filling. Bitty is thankful to have a best friend like Mama who just knows exactly what he needs whenever he needs it. Tonight, he needs the familiarity of a paring knife between his fingers, of rolling a crust over a tin and braiding the edges.

When he goes to sleep that night, he doesn’t dream. 

_ *** _

When Jack opens his eyes, all he sees is white. He thinks it’s one of his tethered dreams, at first, with the endless white ice. But as he blinks his eyes into focus, he sees fluorescent lights. He looks to the left, then the right, and realizes he’s not in his bedroom. He’s in a hospital. Memories of earlier that night resurface: home alone, his parents away on a weekend vacation. The breakdown. Taking all those pills. Calling Parse and leaving a voicemail. Taking more pills. Falling asleep. He doesn’t remember anything after that. Just nothingness. 

That’s all he feels after the overdose. Nothingness. He flushes his meds down the toilet and pours the rest of his alcohol stash down the sink, goes through six months of rehab, and is eventually discharged. His parents move the family to a vacation home in Nova Scotia, away from the eyes of the press and public. He meets with a therapist three times a week and a psychiatrist twice a month. He promises to stay sober, at least until he feels stable and okay enough again. He takes a complete break from hockey for a year, then gets a job teaching peewee hockey to eleven-year-olds at the local ice rink. It feels good to work with the kids, to focus less on the pressure and the competition and more on helping these kids find their passion. Slowly, he begins to feel more and more, usually when he’s with the kids. But there’s still some part of him, deep down, that still feels empty and hollow. He wonders if the feeling will ever go away. He doesn’t dream for three years after the overdose. 

***

He doesn’t notice immediately, but after a week or so, Bitty starts to get worried. His tethered dreams had been happening more frequently for a while, but then they had stopped. He tries to remember, reaches into the deep corners of his memory, the last time he had a dream. It’s hard to pinpoint, but what he  _ does _ know is that he hasn’t had a dream in at least two weeks. He tries to not overthink and panic like he tends to do—he’s just being dramatic, he tells himself—but he can’t resist a quick Google search. He switches from the Twitter app (where he was reading a thread that Beyonce had retweeted) to a web browser and types in  _ stopped having tethered dreams with soulmate.  _ He chews on his thumbnail as he scrolls through and finds the first article that seems at least somewhat reputable—well, Buzzfeed was reputable enough. He taps on  _ 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Soulmates _ and scans the listicle until he finds what he’s looking for.

  1. _It’s actually possible to STOP having tethered dreams with your soulmate before you actually meet them_



_ Most of the time, it’s no big deal. These soulmate things are weird, and there’s a lot we still don’t know about them. Most soulmates who stopped having tethered dreams for a period of time aren’t able to figure out an exact cause of the pause, and research hasn’t found any negative effects of the break. On rare occasions, though, people have reported that they stopped having dreams after their soulmate experienced a major traumatic event, and in even rarer cases, after their soulmate died.  _

So it wasn’t unprecedented, and it was even normal and harmless. Most of the time. Bitty tries to reassure himself, tries to ignore the way his heart feels like it’s being ripped out of his chest, tries to repeat over and over in his head  _ This is normal, and it’s not a big deal.  _ He says it until he believes it, or at least until he believes it enough to stop thinking about it every day. He says it even though he knows, deep down, that somewhere out there in the world, something has happened to his soulmate. 

But Bitty moves on, because that’s all he can do about it, and the ache eventually leaves his chest. The bullying at school gets worse, but a few years later, his father gets a job in the next town over as a high school head football coach. The Bittles move an hour away to Madison, and although Bitty has to say goodbye to Katya and figure skating because the new commute is too far, he gets to enter high school with a completely new set of classmates. He even joins the co-ed club hockey team, and he discovers new ways to enjoy the rush of cold wind through his hair. Sometimes, he thinks about the tethered dreams he used to have back in middle school, but he never dwells on it for too long. Most of the time, he just tells himself,  _ It’s probably fine. I’ll eventually meet my soulmate when it’s meant to happen. This is normal,  _ and moves on with his day. But once in a while, when he happens to think about the dreams on a particularly bad day, he lets his heart ache a little bit. On those days, he has a hard time believing that everything really is fine. 

***

Jack looks down at the colorful folders laid out in front of him on the kitchen table. Emblazoned on each folder is the name of a college—a school that has a spot for him on their hockey team—and Jack can feel his parents’ eyes on him.

“Jack, honey, what are you thinking?” 

Jack doesn’t answer for a few minutes, but his eyes keep flickering to the red folder that says  _ SAMWELL UNIVERSITY _ . He knows what he wants. 

“I want to go to Samwell.” 

There’s a shocked silence, and his father is the first to speak. “Samwell? Are you sure, son? What about Minnesota—they’ve got an incredible team, and you know that NHL recruiters keep an eye out for those players—” He cuts himself short when Maman not-so-discreetly elbows him. 

“I’ve thought about it a lot. I… I need to figure out who I am outside of hockey. I want a fresh start. My therapist thinks it’s a good idea, too.” Jack doesn’t mention how he mostly thinks of Samwell (a relatively unknown university, and definitely not a school known for hockey) as his punishment for fucking up the draft. He also doesn’t mention Samwell’s #1 ranking in U.S. News and World Report for most LGBT-friendly campuses. 

“Well, it’s clear you know what you want,” Maman says gently, “and Samwell is still a lovely school. It’s always nice to keep it in the family.” 

So Jack commits to Samwell that afternoon, and before he knows it, he’s at orientation checking in at the housing front desk to pick up his dorm key. The first week is a blur of lectures and syllabi and thoughts of whether it’s even fair that a freshman seminar already has assigned readings by the second class. By the time week two rolls around, Jack is so desperate to get back on the familiarity of the ice that he doesn’t even feel anxious for his first practice. He wakes up early, makes his way across campus, and walks up to a building that, according to his map, is William T. Faber Ice Rink. He takes a deep breath, opens the door, and walks in. 

As soon as he enters the building, he nearly falls over from someone throwing their weight against him. He regains his balance and sees another person—probably also a freshman, judging by his wild energy and questionable attempt at a moustache—who excitedly claps a hand on his shoulder.

“Sup, brah! You must be the other frosh on the team.”

“Frosh?” It’s the only thing that Jack has registered from the last ten seconds.

“Yeah, homie. It’s, like, a gender-neutral way of saying freshman. I think there’s only two of us this year.” The guy sticks out a hand to shake Jack’s. “I’m Byron, the other frosh. Byron Schitt Knight, and yes I know it’s a dumb as hell name because my mom’s side of the family is old-school nuts, brah. So you can just call me Byron.” 

Jack blinks at Byron. “Huh. Byron Schitt. B.S. Like bullshit.” He cringes at the pun and accidental insult—when your main social interaction for a whole year is with pre-teens, your sense of humor tends to turn a little immature. To his relief, Byron throws his head back and barks out a laugh. 

“Hah! I’ve actually never thought about that before. You’re fucking funny, brah.” 

Before Jack can say anything in return, another person comes up and throws his arms around both of them. “Sup, frogs. Welcome to Samwell Men’s Hockey, a.k.a. SMH, a.k.a. the best group of bros you’ll find on campus.”

“Um, hi. I’m Jack.”

“Oh shit, Jack Zimmermann?” His eyes widen a little, and Jack silently nods. Thankfully, the guy doesn’t say anything else, and instead turns to Byron. “What about you? What’s your name?” 

“I’m Byron Schitt.” His face splits into a grin. “But you can call me Shitty.” 

The upperclassman, who turns out to be team captain, leads them through the locker room and onto the rink for a quick scrimmage. The rest of Jack’s first Samwell Men’s Hockey practice speeds by, and Jack even has time afterward to skim one of the assigned articles for his Introduction to American History lecture later in the morning. He gets added to the SMH group chat and is immediately overwhelmed by the constant stream of messages, but it’s nice to be receiving actual notifications on his phone. He floats through the rest of the day, the thrill of being back on the ice and finally playing proper hockey again flowing through him. The thrill of being on a team again. He basks in a satisfied glow, and when he goes to sleep that night, he has his first dream in three years. 

***

_ Ice. Bitty sees ice, he sees his skates gliding one after the other, gloves on and hockey stick in hand. He’s at club hockey practice. But the rink is different, one that Bitty’s never seen before, and his teammates’ jerseys are the wrong color, and then it all comes rushing back. It hits him all at once—the dreams from years ago, the endless ice, his soulmate Jack, talking with Jack, getting to know Jack, opening up about secrets with Jack, the emptiness of missing Jack all this time.  _

_ Jack is nowhere to be found—Bitty figures this dream is one of Jack’s memories, like when the dreams started last time—but Bitty doesn’t care. He’s dreaming, he’s living one of Jack’s memories. Jack is alive. He’s okay. Everything is okay. Jack is okay. _

When Bitty wakes up, he chokes back a sob and tears start streaming down his face. He cries into his pillow, unable to remember anything about the dream, but he’s just thankful and relieved that the dreams are back. His soulmate is alive. He’s okay. Everything is okay. His soulmate is okay. 

***

_ Jack figured this was bound to happen soon, after he had two dreams in the past month. He was initially confused by the new dreams because he thought he was just dreaming of his SMH practices, but if those were dreams were actually his soulmate’s memories, then maybe that meant Bittle also plays hockey now. It would give them something to bond over, at least.  _

_ Bitty stands, fifty feet away, back turned toward Jack, ice stretching out into the distance. Jack inhales, counts four beats like his therapist suggested, then exhales and starts to walk toward Bittle. He plans to call out once he’s within hearing distance, but before he can get there, Bittle turns around and stares straight into Jack’s eyes.  _

_ “You’re back.”  _

_ Bittle’s tone is cold, but Jack can sense a hint of desperation in the way his voice cracks. Even though Jack is still a distance away, he can see tears prickling the corners of Bittle’s eyes. Bittle starts running and throws his arms around Jack. _

_ “I thought you were gone.”  _

_ “Bittle— Eric, I’m really sorry. I know I just disappeared for a while there.”  _

_ Bittle pulls back and jabs a finger in Jack’s chest. “Three years! THREE! I thought you had died, you know.” He buries his face back in Jack’s chest, and his voice gets quieter. Jack can feel tears soaking through his shirt. “I thought you had died.”  _

_ Jack doesn’t really know what to do (he’s always been awkward when it comes to feelings), so he pats Bittle on the back. After a few minutes, Bittle drops his embrace and pulls back, wiping at his cheeks.  _

_ “So are you going to explain what happened, or is this going to be another one of your secrets?” _

_ Jack sighs. He doesn’t really want to talk about it, if he’s being honest, but Bittle seems really upset, and the least he can do to make up for it is to tell the truth.  _

_ “Remember when I told you that secret about how I would take more anxiety meds than I was supposed to?” Bittle nods. “I… I overdosed. It was the week before the draft and I just couldn’t take it anymore.” Bittle gasps but doesn’t say anything, so Jack continues. “I ended up in rehab for six months, got clean and quit my meds and drinking. Took a few gap years before college. Even coached some peewee for a while.” Jack chuckles at the memories of all the kids he worked with. “I just felt numb most of the time though, which is probably why we didn’t share any dreams that whole time.”  _

_ Bittle’s eyes are soft and sympathetic, and Jack hates to be pitied, but he doesn’t move his arm when Bittle gently reaches over to hold his hand. “Oh Jack, honey. I’m so sorry that happened. Now that I think about it, I might have heard something about it on the news.” Jack grimaces, and Bitty tightens his grip on Jack’s hand. “But I didn’t hear much, I promise. Besides, I didn’t know it was  _ you _.” Bittle’s thumb starts to rub small circles on the back of Jack’s clenched hand. “I’m just glad you’re okay now. You  _ are _ okay now, right?”  _

_ “Yeah, I think I’m okay now.”  _

_ They sit in silence for a few moments, Bitty’s finger steadily tracing endless loops on Jack’s skin. It feels intimate, more intimate than anything Jack has ever felt with his teammates or even Parse, but he doesn’t pull his hand back. It’s soothing, in a way. When he focuses on the patterns, his thoughts are quieter. When Bitty breaks the silence, his voice is barely louder than Jack’s thoughts. _

_ “Do you know why the dreams started again?”  _

_ Jack doesn’t immediately answer because he honestly doesn’t know. Probably something about starting college, since that was a big life event that just happened. He remembers how he felt after his first practice with Samwell Men’s Hockey, and he smiles.  _

_ “I think it’s because I started playing hockey again. But it feels different this time around.”  _

_ “Yeah? Do you wanna say more about that?” _

_ Jack bites his lip, lost in thought. He doesn’t usually spill his feelings (it took him months to open up to this therapist), but something about Bittle puts him at ease. “I don’t really know. It feels so familiar, but it’s also kind of different. I started college thinking it was punishment for my overdose…” Bitty makes a disgruntled noise. “...but it’s actually been good so far. I like the guys on the team. They play good hockey.”  _

_ Bitty smiles at him, and his eyes are shining again. “Well, whatever it is, I’m happy for you. And for the record, I’m also really happy to see you again.” Jack returns the smile. No one says anything next, which would normally be awkward for Jack, but he feels okay right now. They sit together in comfortable silence until the dream fades out.  _

_ *** _

When Bitty wakes up, the ghost of his soulmate’s smile lingers in his mind. He still can’t remember what his soulmate looks like after he wakes up from the dream, but he knows he finally got to see him again. And for now, that’s enough. 

Bitty doesn’t stop thinking about the dream, and thoughts of his soulmate begin to integrate into his daily routine. When he brushes his teeth in the morning and looks at his reflection in the mirror, he tries to visualize the curves of his soulmate’s face. When he scrolls through his Twitter feed, he imagines the sound of his soulmate’s voice. When he stares out the bus window on the way to school, he tries to guess the color of his soulmate’s eyes. And although Bitty’s nightly slumber remains empty and dreamless for a few weeks, he holds on to the little daydreams and doesn’t let go of the hope that has blossomed in his heart.

_ When he finally dreams again, Bitty is buzzing with excitement. He’s a little surprised to see Jack looking a little—if Bitty’s being honest, a lot—worse for wear.  _

_ “Shit, Jack, you kind of look like...well...shit.” Bitty cringes at his ineloquence, but he’s right. Jack’s face has a sickly green tint, and the scowl doesn’t improve his appearance. _

_ “Good to hear I look the same way I feel,” Jack grumbles. _

_ “Uhh you good?” _

_ Jack shakes his head. “I take back what I said earlier. I hate the hockey team.”  _

_ “What on earth happened?”  _

_ “They made me do a keg stand tonight.”  _

_ Bitty fails to escape the giggle that escapes his lips, and Jack glares at him. “I’m sorry, but you suddenly hate the hockey team because of a keg stand?”  _

_ “It was some stupid tradition, where the person who shoots the first goal in the first game of the season has to do a keg stand at the afterparty.”  _

_ “That sounds like normal frat boy behavior, to be honest.”  _

_ Jack groans and presses his palms against his eyes. “It’s…” He sighs. “They just party so much. And sometimes it feels like too much. Being around all that alcohol.”  _

_ Bitty remembers the aftermath of Jack’s overdose, and he understands. He hesitantly asks, “Was that...the first time since…?” Jack nods. “Are you...okay with that? With drinking again?”  _

_ “I mean, it’s not like I was planning on being sober for the rest of my life. I was just going to slowly ease back into it. Not chug beer while hanging upside down.” Jack grimaces at the memory. “My tolerance is definitely not what it used to be.”  _

_ “That’s fair. How was the game, though?” _

_ Jack’s frown is replaced by a small smile. “We won, so that was good. And I felt good during the game, too. I missed how it feels to really play hockey. And how it feels to celebrate a win.” _

_ “Sounds like you don’t hate the team that much after all.”  _

_ Jack’s smile stretches a little wider. “I guess not.”  _

***

It’s spring quarter of his sophomore year, and Jack is staring at an email in his inbox. It’s from his academic advisor, reminding him that he missed the deadline to declare a major and won’t be able to enroll in next year’s classes until he declares. Jack groans and buries his face in his hands. Why can’t everything be as straightforward as hockey? 

He reflects on his first two years at Samwell. He’s been taking a lot of history classes, and he seems to like them enough. He also took a beginner’s photography class during winter quarter to fulfill the Creative Expression gen-ed requirement, and that was a lot of fun. But a whole major? That’s a lot of commitment. Does his major even matter that much if he’s just going to join a NHL team (if everything went according to plan) after finishing college? He groans and slams his laptop shut. 

“You okay, brah?” Shitty’s voice carries through their shared bathroom and into Jack’s room. 

“Yeah… Well, no. I don’t know. Ugh. I’m just stressing about declaring.” 

A few seconds later, Shitty comes barreling into Jack’s room, rolling backwards on his desk chair. In lieu of a stop, he slams into Jack’s bedpost and launches himself onto the mattress. “What’s up, dude? Spill.” 

“Ugh okay first of all, Shitty, I already told you to wear pants if you’re gonna sit on my bed.” Jack rolls his eyes at Shitty’s bright red boxer briefs, and Shitty just grins. “I just don’t know what to pick for my major. And I only have a few weeks left to decide before the deadline. It’s like, I’ve been taking classes and stuff just like everyone else, but everything just...feels insignificant compared to hockey. And I’m planning on joining the NHL after I finish at Samwell, so does it even matter that much?”

Shitty leans back against the wall and airily waves a hand. “Pish, posh. Does anything  _ really _ matter, in the grand scheme of things? We’re just tiny insignificant specks of dust in the universe, brah.” 

“Shitty, just because you dropped acid once with one of the co-op seniors, that doesn’t mean you’re  _ fundamentally changed _ or whatever you keep saying.” Jack laughs, knowing that Shitty will probably ignore his comment. “Haha. But seriously, you know what I mean.” 

“Okay, okay, I gotchu.” Shitty raises his hands in mock surrender. “I mean it, though. We’ve been at Samwell for almost two years now. We’ve stuck by each other through all the wins and losses, and everything outside of that. Remember that puck bunny frosh year who was low-key stalking you? Or that one time we thought the Haus attic was actually haunted and we tried to talk to the ghosts?” They both laugh at the memory. “College is about so much more than just one line on your diploma, more than your actual classes, dude. Like, I’d still be an econ major if I hadn’t gone to that sick-ass workshop series during Gender Liberation and Awareness Month at the Women’s Community Center. It’s about all the fuckin’ life lessons you learn, the friends and memories you make, brah. When we’re at our ten-year reunion, we won’t remember whatever useless comment Lacrosse Chad said in our Advanced Global Economic fucking Policy discussion section. Nah, brah, we’re gonna be talking about the Epikegster after we win the Frozen Four.” Shitty throws a pillow at Jack, and he catches it and holds it to his chest as he quietly thinks about all the memories with his teammates (who are also his friends, he reminds himself). He thinks about the team breakfasts in the dining hall, the keg stand at the rager after he scored the first goal of the season, the scrimmages on The Pond when it froze over, the dozens of teach-ins that he got dragged into by Shitty. 

“I remember that workshop series we went to last year. You didn’t shut up about gender pronouns for, like, two months after it.” 

“Yeah, brah. I had never even heard of the concept of introducing yourself with pronouns before that panel. That shit changed my life.” 

Jack thinks about how Shitty has become such a constant presence in his life, how Shitty’s the only person at Samwell who Jack has opened to about his overdose, how Shitty’s talked Jack out of at least six anxiety spirals in the time they’ve been roommates. He thinks about his secrets, the ones he holds close to his chest, and the list of people who know his secrets. Right now, it’s a list of one: Parse. Maybe Jack is ready to add a second name to the list. 

“Hey Shitty, can I tell you something?” 

“You already know the answer is always.” 

“Haha. Yeah…” Jack tries to swallow, but his throat is dry. His heart starts to beat faster. He opens his mouth before he loses his courage, and it comes out in a rush. 

“I’m bisexual.” 

Shitty blinks at Jack. “Shit, Jack, that’s great! Thanks for telling me and trusting me with that, man.” 

Jack blinks back at Shitty. “Wow. Yeah. That was weird to say out loud. You’re the only person other than Parse—” Jack stumbles for a second. “You’re only the second person who knows.” 

“I got you, homie. My lips are sealed—I’ll keep it on the DL.” Shitty mimes a zipper closing over his mouth. “Seriously, Jack, I’m really happy you felt like you could tell me, and I’m really honored. It’s only as big of a deal as you want it to be, but whatever you want or need, brah, I’m here for you.” 

“Wow, you’re really good at this.” 

Shitty shrugs his shoulders. “You know, you’re actually the fifth person to come out to me this week.”

“That’s pretty wack, Shitty. But also pretty cool. Especially since you’re straight and all.” 

“What can I say? That’s praxis, baby.” 

***

_ After two years, Jack has become a familiar sight in Bitty’s dreams. When they first came back, Bitty was afraid that it would be awkward to share dreams again after so long, especially after Jack’s incident. But, if anything, Jack’s vulnerability about his overdose brought them closer together, and they’ve been rebuilding their friendship since then. The dreams happen regularly, now, usually a few times every month. Not too often to distract Bitty from his everyday life, but enough to consider Jack one of his close friends. They’ve built a solid relationship that is comfortable and open and has enough chirping to keep Bitty laughing. There are still times where Bitty has to catch himself—he had a moment a few weeks ago where he nearly revealed his crush on Tyler from the football team—but for the most part, he and Jack have fallen into a steady routine. Usually, they catch each other up on their lives since the last tethered dream. Other times, they play the question game.  _

_ Right now, it’s Jack’s turn to ask a question. “What’s something you’re looking forward to in the near future?”  _

_ “Ooh, that’s an easy one! I’m driving up from Madison tomorrow to start college!”  _

_ “Congrats, Bittle! That’s pretty huge. Where are you going?”  _

_ “It’s this school outside of Boston called Samwell. I never thought I’d make it as far as the East Coast, but I got an athletic scholarship.” Bitty buzzes with excitement.  _

_ Jack throws his head back and laughs. “No fucking way, Bittle.  _ I  _ go to Samwell.”  _

_ “WHAT???”  _

_ “Yeah, I guess it never came up in conversation before. My mom went to Samwell, too, actually.” _

_ Bitty’s buzz has skyrocketed to a high-frequency internal screeching. “Shut up. Shut UP. You are not serious right now. Are you saying we’re going to actually meet each other in real life soon?”  _

_ “It makes sense, doesn’t it? We have to eventually meet somewhere.”  _

_ “Still, though!!” Bitty does not understand how Jack seems so calm about this breaking news. He feels like he’s going to explode. His body is literally vibrating with excitement. “We’re about to meet each other in real life! Oh Jack, I’m so excited! What do you think it’s going to be like? Where do you think we’ll meet?”  _

_ Jack pointendly looks at the ice surrounding them. “I don’t know, maybe the sport that we both play? The one that you got a scholarship for? The one that I’m captain for?”  _

_ Bitty laughs and playfully shoves Jack. “Shut uppppp.”  _

_ “Okay.” Jack doesn’t say anything after that and pretends to look into the distance.  _

_ “UGH you’re so ridiculous. You know that’s not what I meant.” _

_ Jack turns his head to look at Bitty and smiles. “Seriously, though. Congratulations, Bittle. That’s really exciting.”  _

_ “It is!!! I have all my things packed up, and we’re leaving first thing in the morning. It’s a 17-hour drive, but between me, Mama, and Coach, we can probably make it in one day.”  _

_ Jack leans against Bitty’s arm, just for a second, just long enough for Bitty to wonder whether it was intentional or not. “Why’d you choose Samwell? If you got recruited by Coach Murray and Coach Hall, then you probably had offers from other schools, too.”  _

_ Bitty chews on his lip, unsure of how truthful he wants to be. He could just say something vague, like how he thought the campus culture seemed cool _ ,  _ but he remembers that Jack is his soulmate, and he wants to be his whole self. That was his whole goal for college, anyways—to live as his most authentic, whole self. And if they’re really soulmates, then it shouldn’t matter.  _

_ “To be completely honest, because it’s one of the best LGBT-friendly schools.” Bitty takes a moment to breathe. “And, well, I’m from a conservative, Christian small-town in rural Georgia.” He hopes that Jack can put two and two together, but then pushes himself because dammit he’s a Wellie now, and this is the fresh start he’s been waiting for. “And...I’m gay.” Bitty holds his breath.  _

_ Jack’s expression doesn’t crack. “Yeah, same. Well, it was  _ one _ of the reasons I chose Samwell.”  _

_ “Huh?” Bitty thinks he feels an asthma attack coming. Jack just averts his eyes and fiddles with his watch.  _

_ “I’m also...gay. Well, bisexual. But yeah.” _

Bitty wakes up, and his heart is pounding against his chest. He quickly remembers that today is the day, finally, he leaves Georgia to start his new life at Samwell. The day-long road trip is brutal, but when they enter campus and he sees a banner that says “Welcome Wellies Class of 2017!”, it already feels worth it. This is it. This is his fresh start, his opportunity to be free. He hopes for a good roommate, interesting classes, friendly teammates, new friends, lots of baking. Maybe even some romantic pursuits, if he’s lucky. For the first time in a long time, Bitty just lets himself hope. 

***

Just when things were finally going well for Jack, some piece of shit frog had to go and screw it all up for him. Well, Bittle hadn’t screwed up anything  _ yet, _ since they were still in pre-season, but at this rate, he might as well just throw the whole season out the window. Jack couldn’t believe it. Here he was, in his second term as captain of Samwell Men’s Hockey, and this was going to be the most important year of his life—NHL recruits will be paying more attention to him this year, attending his games, and hopefully drawing up contracts by spring quarter. This was finally his chance to redeem himself. Everything was perfectly lined up in place, but then this piece of shit from Georgia came out of nowhere with the sun shining out of his ass.

Jack has no idea what the coaches were thinking when they recruited this Bittle kid. He’s small, for starters, even smaller than most of Jack’s old peewee kids. He also only has four years of hockey under his belt, and it wasn’t even in a league that allowed checking, so Bittle has little-to-no experience in one of the most physical and important components of the sport. Jack thinks about their first practice earlier that week and Bittle’s five-foot-six body collapsed on center ice. Sure, the kid was a fast skater, but what’s the point if he can’t even take a check? 

Jack bitterly swallows his thoughts, washing them down with a gulp of coffee. He’s at the dining hall for Saturday team brunch, and he can’t stop glaring at the golden-blonde back of Bittle’s head. Bittle makes his way over to the table and sits down across from him, and it makes Jack feel some type of way. A tingling under his skin. Jack doesn’t like the feeling. 

“Bittle.” Jack acknowledges him, then looks down at Bittle’s plate. French toast, oatmeal, and some fruit. “You should eat more protein,” Jack grunts. 

Bittle crosses his arms and huffs. “Well, good morning to you too, Captain.”

The tingling intensifies, and it’s distracting. Jack doesn’t have time for this shit. Their first game is in less than a month. He promptly stands up, grabs his dirty plates and takes them to the dish return, then returns to the table and grabs his bag. “Gonna head out now. To work on drills before class.” He turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the door. He sees, out of the corner of his eye, Bittle leaning over to Ransom, and his ears barely pick up the whispered “What’s his deal?” 

Jack shakes his head. He knows he’s being hard on the frog, and he’s not exactly sure  _ what _ his deal is, to be honest. It’s not like the other frogs made his skin crawl like that. But then again, Ollie and Wicks could take a check. 

  
  


The next morning, Jack wakes up at 4 AM. He picks up his phone and scrolls through the SMH group chat member list, and he presses the call button next to  _ Eric R. Bittle _ . The line rings a few times, and Jack’s about to hang up but then the receiver picks up, and he hears a bleary voice. 

“Uhhh who is this?” 

“Bittle. Meet me at Faber in thirty minutes.” 

Jack doesn’t wait for a reply and hangs up. 

***

“Reason number seventeen to hate Jack: He woke me up. At 4 AM. To skate at Faber. On a Sunday. Because Jack Zimmermann works harder than God.” 

Bitty yawns and turns off his vlogging camera. Between the physical exertion of his first checking clinic with Jack Zimmermann and the mental stress of being alone for three hours with Jack Zimmermann on top of the blur of new classes, new places, and new people in his first two weeks at Samwell, Bitty is  _ exhausted _ . He groans when he remembers he has a 9 AM lecture tomorrow, and he glances at the clock. 12:37 AM. Shit. He needs to go to bed soon if he wants a full seven hours of sleep. 

_ It’s been two weeks since his last dream right before he arrived at Samwell, and a lot has happened outside of the dream-world since then. Including meeting his soulmate in real life. Bitty’s heart races in his chest, and for the first time, Bitty actually feels nervous—he’s never felt nervous around Jack in the past. But that was before they added real-life memories on top of their dream-world memories. Before it got messy. _

_ “So…” Jack doesn’t meet Bitty’s eyes. _

_ “Yuuup.” Bitty shoves his hands in his pockets and grimaces. “Yikes.”  _

_ “Well, I guess we know now what happens when soulmates meet in real life.”  _

_ “Yeah, apparently they hate each other and wake them up at 4 in the gosh darn morning to go ice skating.”  _

_ Jack frowns. “I don’t... _ hate _ you.”  _

_ “Well, you definitely don’t  _ like _ me.” Bitty crosses his arms. He feels a headache forming at his temples, his brain trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance of dream-Jack (his awkward yet funny and, Bitty remembers with a skip of his heart, queer soulmate) and real-life Jack (his robot captain with a hockey stick shoved so far up his ass that it makes Bitty want to rip out his hair). _

_ Jack’s frown deepens, and his piercing blue eyes stare through Bitty’s soul. “It’s just...it’s complicated, okay? I’m under a lot of pressure this year.” Jack crosses his arms, mirroring Bitty’s posture. “And it doesn’t help when one of your new teammates can’t even take a check. In hockey. The sport that legally allows you to beat up your opponents.”  _

_ “Okay, point taken. But come on,” Bitty whines, “4 AM? Seriously?”  _

_ Jack doesn’t even blink. “There was a youth hockey tournament at 7. We needed enough time to practice.”  _

_ “For THREE hours?” _

_ “It’s just a stupid mental block you have, Bittle. If that’s the only thing keeping you from being a good player, then I’m going to keep practicing with you until you stop being scared.”  _

_ “I know, I know, that’s what you said this morning.” Bitty runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. Dream-Jack is currently being anal-hockey-robot-captain Jack, and at this rate, Bitty is going to lose all of his hair by the time he turns 21. “It’s not that simple!” He takes a breath to compose himself. “It’s also complicated for me, okay?”  _

_ “So tell me about it.”  _

_ “What?”  _

_ “Talk about it. About whatever’s going on in your head that makes you scared of checks.” Jack shrugs, arms still crossed. “It’s not like there’s anything else we can do right now besides talk, and maybe it’ll help.” _

_ “I can’t just...spill my feelings everywhere,” Bitty sputters, “and have my checking problem magically fix itself overnight.”  _

_ “No, you can’t. But it still helps to talk to someone about your problems.” Jack’s voice softens, and the edge in his eyes fades away. “Trust me, I would know.”  _

_ Bitty winces when he remembers Jack’s weekly calls with his therapist. “Fine.”  _

_ So he spills his baggage and his trauma, and tells Jack everything. He tells Jack about the first football game he played as a child. The kid from the other team who towered over Bitty and tackled him, almost knocking him out. How he laid half-conscious on the ground as all the other boys, even his own teammates, started calling him slurs. How he grew up with all those boys, sitting in the same classrooms and walking in the same hallways. How the insults got sharper, and how the boys also started shoving in the cafeteria and catcalling behind the teachers’ backs and throwing punches in hidden corners. All the bruises and scrapes that his parents thought were from figure skating. How it actually got worse as Bitty got older and it became more obvious that he was different from the other boys. He even tells Jack about the night he got locked in a utility closet overnight and how he fell asleep crying, curled up next to the mop buckets until the janitor found him the next morning.  _

_ Jack is silent and just stares at Bitty as he rambles. Bitty feels his cheeks burning so he ducks his head and nervously fiddles with his hands in his lap.  _

_ “So that’s my sad origin story. Thankfully, we moved to Madison when I was 15 and I got a fresh start in high school. But I still can’t take checks, even now, because every time I get hit, I instinctively freeze and collapse. Probably because that was the fastest way to get the bullies to leave me alone. I just feel like I’m six years old and laying on that football field all over again.” _

_ When he finishes, Jack stays quiet. Bitty’s palms start to sweat. Finally, Jack says something.  _

_ “Shit, Bittle. That’s a lot.” _

_ “Hah,” Bitty humorlessly laughs, “Yeah. No kidding.” _

_ “I kinda know how you feel, though. Thankfully, they never got physically aggressive, but I got bullied a bit as a kid, too.”  _

_ “No way, what could anyone even criticize about the perfect hockey prince Jack Zimmermann?”  _

_ Jack’s lips curl into a lopsided grin. “Believe it or not, I was really awkward back then.” _

_ “Wow,” Bitty gasps in mock surprise. “Jack Zimmermann? Being socially awkward? Why, I never.” He emphasizes the twang in his accent on the last bit, and Jack wrinkles his nose, but he’s still smiling.  _

_ “I was also pretty awkward-looking. Kinda chubby, actually.”  _

_ Bitty knocks his elbow against Jack’s arm, teasing. “Are you saying that Jack Zimmermann didn’t come out of the womb looking like a French-Canadian god?” His heart stutters—Bitty knows that sounded flirty, but it just slipped out—and he hopes that Jack is oblivious enough to not notice. Thankfully, Jack seems unfazed. _

_ “Haha. Very funny. Pre-teen Jack lived off of chicken tenders and chocolate cake. Thank God for puberty.”  _

Bitty wakes up to Nicki’s verse in “Monster”,  _ Pull up in the monster automobile gangster with a bad bitch that came from—  _ He quickly realizes his phone is ringing. It’s still dark outside and he squints at Jack’s name, lighting up the screen. 

“Jack, what the fuck. Do you even know what time it is?” 

“It’s 4:30. Where are you?” 

“In bed? Asleep? Like a normal human?” 

“You’re late.”

“Late for what?? Checking practice???” Jack doesn’t say anything on his end of the line. Bitty groans, not bothering to muffle his voice so that Jack can hear his suffering, and resists the urge to fling his phone at the wall. “Ugh. Fine. Give me fifteen.”

“Okay. See you soon.” Jack hangs up and Bitty stares at the dark ceiling, willing for the knot in his stomach to unravel. It doesn’t budge, so Bitty just sighs and rolls out of bed. 

***

By winter quarter, Jack starts to get suspicious. He gets his first clue during Haze-a-palooza, when Shitty bestows Haus keys to the frogs. He can hear Shitty’s voice carrying up from the porch all the way into his room. 

“Gooooood morning, frogs. You, the uninitiated of the Samwell Hockey Team, have the distinct and unparalleled honor of entering, for the very first time, our humble abode: The Haus.” Jack smiles to himself, remembering his very first Haus tour exactly two years ago. “The decisions you make in this house will be regretful but glorious. The alcohol you drink will be cheap, but plentiful. And the loss of virginity you may experience within these walls will range from reassuring to emotionally damaging.” Shitty’s voice gets louder, and Jack figures they’ve entered the Haus by now. “And for the love of Christ, try to remember the layout of the Haus for Haze-a-palooza. You’ll need to know it blindfolded and bitch-ass shitfaced.” Jack stands up from his desk, stretches, and leaves his room to go greet the frogs. He hears Ransom and Holster’s voices too, and judging from the rustling and clanking, they’ve brought the supplies.

“Wait. Holster...What the fuck is that smell? Goddamn! It’s like my aunt’s house. But with more love and innocence.” 

“Bro, I’ve been to your aunt’s house? And no offense, but compared to this, her house smells like a shithole.” 

Ransom raises a hand—the other precariously balancing three cases of Natty Light—to fistbump Jack as he comes down the stairs. Jack peers into the kitchen over the kegs and stacks of cups littering the hallway and sees Bittle wearing an apron and oven mitts and clutching a pie. 

“Oh. Hey, everyone. Haha.” Bittle looks embarrassed, but Jack is distracted by how good the pie smells. “Sometimes, when I’m in kitchens, I just… Pies appear.”

“Wow. We’ve only been here for five minutes.” 

Jack squints, and a puzzle piece in his head falls into place. He sees a flash of a memory, a dream he’s had a few times by now, of soft hands kneading dough and rolling out a pie crust. Bittle pulls off his mitts and looks for plates to distribute slices of pie, and when he turns back around, Jack sneaks a peek at his hands. He sees the softest goddamn hands he’s ever seen. He starts to panic, realizing what this might mean, but he shoves his thoughts to the back of his head. They have their first game of the season next week, and he needs to focus. He can’t get distracted by this soulmate shit. If he’s thinking about Bittle, he should be thinking about how Bittle needs to get with the program or quit already. He’ll just figure all this shit out later. 

***

Bitty feet pound on the linoleum floor, and he bursts through the stadium’s back door just in time to catch Jack before he leaves. 

“Hey, Jack! Wait up! I’m so glad I caught you.” He pauses to catch his breath. “‘Cause um. I just wanted to say again… Good game! And thank—”

“Bittle. It was a lucky shot.”

Bitty freezes, his blood turning cold. Jack doesn’t even bother to look behind him as he walks down the stairs. When Jack is nothing but a moving dot in the distance, Bitty feels the ice in his veins turn to fire. What the fuck!? Why was Jack being so bitchy? First, he chewed Bitty out in practice in front of everyone two days before the game. And then he got all pissy when Coach Hall put Bitty on the same starting line as Jack, which Bitty feels like he should at least get some credit for, because if he gets to be on the starting line, then that must mean he’s not  _ horrible  _ at hockey. Bitty really thought things were getting better with Jack, though, especially after the conversation and the goddamn  _ fistbump _ they shared right before the game. And then Bitty  _ scored _ a goal against Yale, and it’s not like they even lost the game, so he really doesn’t understand why Jack is so pissed at him. Maybe he’ll never be good enough for Jack. 

_ “Jack, what the fuck?” Bitty says in lieu of a greeting. _

_ “Ah, Bittle, I’m sorry about what I said earlier—”  _

_ “Jack, do you know what’s  _ really _ frustrating about this whole soulmates situation?” Bitty cuts him off. There’s nowhere to go in the endless dreamscape, so Bitty paces in circles and animatedly waves his hands as he rants. “The most frustrating thing is that we’re  _ friends _ in dream-land. I think we can say by now that we’re pretty good friends.” Jack silently nods in agreement. “And I  _ know _ that you’re not just a hockey robot psycho captain, because we actually  _ know _ each other. We’ve literally told each other our secrets! But in real life, when it’s just the two of us as teammates, and we don’t remember each other?” Bitty sighs, resigned. “It sucks. Jack, you’re so mean to me,” Bitty whines, and Jack makes an apologetic face.  _

_ “I know, and I’m really sorry, Bittle.” Jack’s eyes look even sadder than usual. “I’m just… I guess I really wanted to score during the game, to make my dad proud, since he was actually there for once. I was mad at myself for failing, so I took it out on you.”  _

_ “But it wasn’t a failure—we literally won the game! Did you manage to forget about the afterparty kegster that’s probably still going on right now?” _

_ “Oh no trust me, it was definitely still in full swing downstairs by the time I went to sleep. But it’s different… For me, it’s different. I need to make sure I’m performing well, making those goals and hitting the net at every game.” _

_ “Well, how much is good enough?” _

_ “What do you mean?” _

_ “When are you gonna stop? You can’t be like this—all stressed out and bitchy—for the rest of your life. What’s it going to take for you to think, ‘I’m good enough’?”  _

_ Jack chews on his lip and thinks for a few seconds before he answers. “I don’t know.”  _

_ “Seriously, Jack,” Bitty sounds exasperated now. “When will you be satisfied with yourself? After you join the NHL? Win an Art Ross and the Cup and become captain all in one year?” _

_ “Well…”  _

_ “Jack! Are you for real right now? You can’t keep having these crazy high expectations for yourself, or else you’re going to burn out and die.” Bitty claps a hand to his mouth, horrified when he realizes what he just said. Jack’s icy blue eyes stare directly into Bitty’s soul.  _

_ “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Jack breaks his eye contact with Bitty. “I’m scared of letting everyone down. Again. Of letting myself down. I’m not eighteen anymore. I’m lucky enough to even get a second chance, and I can’t take any risks this time. I can’t mess up. It’s just a lot of—” _

_ “A lot of pressure, I know. But Jack, honey, can’t you see that you’re tearing yourself apart? You’re allowed to make mistakes, because no one is perfect. Not even you.” Jack doesn’t say anything. “Please? At the very least, can you try to chill out enough to be less of an asshole to me?” _

_ Jack smiles a bit at the suggestion. “Okay, Bittle. I’ll try. For you.” His smile turns into a smirk. “Don’t think you’re getting out of checking practices, though.”  _

_ “I wouldn’t dream of it.”  _

_ “Haha. Dream of it. Get it, because—”  _

_ “Jack, I swear to God, if you finish that sentence, I’m going to lose it. You’re on thin fucking ice.” _

_ “Haha. Ice. Get it, because—” _

_ “JACK LAURENT ZIMMERMANN.”  _

_ *** _

By the time spring rolls around, Jack has managed to lower his bitchiness levels to normal. Things are starting to get busy, and most of his free time between classes and practice is filled with phone calls, meetings, and negotiations. His anxiety still flares up sometimes, but most of the time, it’s a dull throb in his head that’s easy enough to ignore. These days, most of the space in his brain is filled with a constant stream of questions: What’s more important to him—ice time or location? Should he sign with an expansion team? Should he stay on the East Coast or go to the Midwest? Or even the West Coast? 

“Jack? You there?”

Jack blinks and his eyes focus on Bitty’s face across from him. “Euh, sorry, what was that?” 

Bitty smiles warmly over the rim of his compostable coffee cup. They had developed a habit of going to Annie’s in the free hour between practice and their respective morning lectures. A few months ago, Jack had figured out that Bittle complains a lot less during 4 A.M. checking practice if he knows Jack will buy him pumpkin spice lattes afterward. The pumpkin spice lattes, unfortunately, had phased out as the days got warmer (much to Bittle’s vocal disappointment) but he’s still satisfied enough with an iced caramel macchiato in a corner booth by the windows. 

Some days, they cram for quizzes and study together. Most days, they just talk. Usually about hockey, but lately, they’ve started talking about other things. Like how much they hate the Lacrosse Chads (they really just say stupid shit in class to make themselves feel smart), Jack’s interest in amateur photography (he wants to take another class before he graduates), Bitty’s YouTube baking channel and vlog (that he keeps very secretive and has yet to show to anyone on the team). Once they started talking about things other than hockey, they got to know each other better, and the bitter tension between them faded and was replaced by a budding friendship. He considers Bitty to be one of his good friends now.

“No worries. I just asked what’s on your mind, since it seems like you’re thinking about some stuff.” 

“Oh, yeah. It’s nothing, just—” Jack hesitates and fiddles with the lid of his cup. What  _ is _ on his mind? Jack has so many questions all the time, with all the decisions he has to make about his rapidly approaching NHL career, and so many things in his life feel uncertain. The consistency of daily coffee runs with Bitty have been a much-needed escape. Right now, all he can think about is how warm and comfortable he feels, sitting in this coffee shop with Bitty on a Tuesday morning. Jack smiles. “Just thinking about the things I’m thankful for in life.” 

“Aww, Jack!” Bitty grabs his cheeks with his hands. “You DO have feelings after all!”

“Haha. Okay, Bitty.” 

“Well you can’t just stop there! I want to hear about all these things you’re thankful for.” 

Jack thinks for a moment. “Hockey.” Bitty rolls his eyes but lets Jack continue. “The team. My friends.” Jack hesitates. “Coffee runs with you.” His stomach lurches.

“Oh.” Bitty’s cheeks are bright red, and it’s quite endearing. “Anything else?”

Jack thinks about Bitty. About his friendship with Bitty. He thinks about his soulmate. He hasn’t told Bitty yet because he’s still not one hundred percent sure that Bitty is actually his soulmate. When he first started suspecting last quarter, he was annoyed and tried to will the whole soulmate and dreams situation to go away, but these days, he finds that he doesn’t mind. These, he actually hopes that Bitty will turn out to be his real soulmate. These days, he truly believes that it can work out between them.

***

Dammit. God fucking dammit. Bitty can NOT believe he did it again. After last time, he swore that he would never fall for a straight guy again, but he just HAD to go and bribe his way into Women, Food, & American Culture, a senior seminar that also happened to appear on Jack’s class schedule. And he just HAD to sit next to Jack every day, watching him doodle hockey plays in his notebook instead of take actual notes. And he just HAD come up with a complicated, hands-on final project. And offer to be partners with Jack for the final. And spend three hours in the Haus kitchen making pies with Jack. And fall for Jack, and have this stupid, pointless, never-will-become-anything-more crush. 

Bitty groans to himself—of  _ course _ he had to get a crush on his captain. His very unavailable (both emotionally and romantically) captain. His captain and also his  _ friend _ . But honestly...can anyone blame him? Bitty would be lying if he said that he had never stolen a few glances in Jack’s direction when they were changing in the locker room, or admired the sheen of sweat on Jack’s skin when they played on the same line. God, he’s being ridiculous. He needs to chill the fuck out. He needs to take a shower. 

After he finishes his eight-step skincare routine and blow dries his hair to satisfaction, Bitty grabs his phone and settles into bed. He absentmindedly scrolls through social media and pauses at a picture of the boys at Lardo’s art exhibition. Whoever took the picture had captured a candid, and Bitty looks at Jack’s smile—it’s a genuine one, the kind that reaches his eyes—and his heart swoops. Jack’s smiling face is the last thing Bitty sees before he falls asleep.

_ It’s a sight Bitty is well-acquainted with—the Haus kitchen. Next to him is a laptop, and he glances down and sees an article titled “Traditional, Authentic 1950s Apple Pie Recipe” and figures out that he’s reliving his memories from the day. That’s what brains do when you sleep, right? Process and sorts through your memories? He opens his mouth and is startled when the voice isn’t his own. _

_ “Bittle, I’m messing up your project. Look at this. It’s awful…” _

_ “Stop it.” Bitty hears his voice speak, and he glances over his shoulder to see himself standing at the counter and mixing dough. He figures it out quickly—this dream is one of Jack’s memories, seeing the world through Jack’s eyes, and it feels surreal. He hears dream-Bitty reassuring him. “I’m sure it’s great. Lemme see—”  _

_ “I have no idea why you’re trusting me with this. Look—” He turns around at the same moment dream-Bitty does, and suddenly they’re caught face-to-face, cramped between the counter and sink, pressed against each other. He stammers out a “Oh, sorry—” right as dream-Bitty squeaks, “Pardon me—”, and there’s a pause before dream-Bitty nervously laughs. The tinkling sound makes Bitty feel a spark shoot up dream-Jack’s spine.  _

_ “E-excuse you, but my kitchen is no place for checking!” _

_ “...Your kitchen?” Bitty feels dream-Jack smirk, a warmth bubbling in his chest.  _

_ “Well, THE kitchen! Now move your big...um…” _

_ “My big…?” He suppresses a laugh, and the warmth grows. Dream-Bitty throws a handful of flour in his face, and the laugh escapes his lips.  _

_ “I was asking about your professional career, Mr. Zimmermann.”  _

_ “Right… I was talking with some assistant GMs from the California teams last week. They’re all really nice, but I still have my big three…” He zones out as he hears Jack’s voice ramble about his upcoming career prospects. He looks at dream-Bitty, and dream-Bitty clearly has also zoned out and is staring at him with wide eyes. He looks into dream-Bitty’s eyes—his own eyes—and sees a boy transfixed by him, hopelessly catching feelings, with a little fear hiding behind the brown irises. _

Bitty wakes up with a feeling he can only describe as heart diarrhea. He feels like he’s going to die. He turns on his phone and swipes it open to an Instagram post, and Bitty’s eyes immediately go to Jack’s stupid beautiful face, and the events of yesterday hit him. Well, just one event. One six-second interaction between the sink and the counter. But he’s reliving the tingle in his spine and the warmth in his chest, and  _ Lord  _ this is getting ridiculous. Bitty desperately needs to talk to someone but doesn’t know who. Normally, he’d just call Mama, but he’s not out to her yet, and he definitely can’t talk to Jack about this. Bitty briefly considers Shitty, especially after he was so supportive when Bitty came out for the first time, but Shitty is best bros with Jack, so he’s too close to the source. 

Feeling stumped, Bitty settles for pulling out his camera and skimming through the comments on his most recent vlog. He sets up the tripod and presses the record button.

“So hey, y’all! Back again with a new vlog! Now, for a while now, some of you have been asking about my love life, and for advice. Why you  _ would _ is beyond me…”

***

Jack walks side-by-side with Shitty, farther ahead than the rest of the team, and the two turn a corner and take a detour to check out the rink. Jack’s midterm project for his Intermediate Photography class is about hockey traditions and rituals, and he has an idea for a shot. He hears the frogs (tadpoles?) behind him, running by. 

“Holy fuck, you know what? You’re gonna be back here in like, a few months, huh?” 

Jack angles his camera lens. “I guess so… I haven’t actually signed yet.” 

“You  _ guess _ so?” Shitty leans against the boards. “Jack, surprise me and  _ don’t _ join the NHL. Surprise me and do like, competitive fucking horticulture.” 

A voice calls out from somewhere behind them. “Hey, y’all!” 

Jack turns around and sees Bittle walking toward the rink. “Oh. Hey, Bittle.”

“Bits!” Shitty hollers at Bittle, “Wanna look at the ice and get all sad with us?”

Bittle jogs to close the distance, and he’s a little out of breath when he reaches them. 

“Is it weird for y’all? Knowing…”

“Oh, yeah, super weird.” Shitty adjusts the tape on his hockey stick. “Mega weird.” 

Jack snaps a picture and lowers the camera. “It’s weird… But we can’t think of it as our last game. We’ve made it this far by playing in the moment. All of us in the moment, in every period. Every shift. We’ll leave everything on the ice because that’s what we always do. It’s one more game.” Jack inhales and breathes out. “Just one more.” 

Shitty places a hand on Jack’s shoulder and drags him into a tackle. “Played every game with you, brother. Glad to play this one too.” 

Jack laughs, holding his camera at arm’s reach, away from Shitty draping himself over Jack’s shoulders. “Shits—”

“Sshhhhhh. I got your baaaaaaaack!”

“Haha okay, okay.” Shitty finally releases Jack, and he regains his balance. “Come on. Let’s head back.”

“Brah, if we win tomorrow, I get a lifetime supply of Zimmermann hugs! No questions!” Shitty leads the way through the tunnel. “You get that shot you wanted?”

“Yeah…” Jack looks over his shoulder and sees Bittle staring at the rink, his back toward the tunnel. Jack raises his camera and snaps a shot, then calls out, “Come on, Bittle.” 

The next time they walk out that tunnel, Jack feels like he’s going to explode. He’s shaking, tears threatening to spill over, and he can’t tell if it’s because of anger, frustration, disappointment, or sadness. He rips off his helmet and throws it with force, and it bounces off his cubicle and falls to the empty locker room floor. When he peels off his jersey, he can see (at the edges of his rapidly tunneling vision) his teammates hugging and consoling each other, coming to terms with the end of their season. He feels like he can’t breathe, like he’s going to pass out, and he knows he needs to be somewhere alone and definitely not here. He pushes past Holster and runs out of the locker room, aimlessly wandering around the arena until he stumbles upon the loading dock. He collapses on a stack of wooden pallets, and he lets himself cry. He heaves and he sobs, and he doesn’t even care if people see him.

He hears the door behind him snick open, then a single footstep. He looks over his shoulder, and he sees Bittle standing at the edge of the dock with wide eyes. Jack opens his mouth and tries to speak, but nothing comes out, and he chokes back a sob instead. Without saying anything, Bitty joins him on the wooden pallets and wraps his arms around Jack’s shoulders. Jack can feel Bitty’s warmth through his pads, and he accepts the comfort. He lets the tears flow, doesn’t try to restrain his sobs, and soaks the shoulder of Bitty’s shirt. It doesn’t take too long before Jack feels his heart rate slow down and his breathing even out. His mind is still all over the place, but right now in Bitty’s arms, he feels like he’s going to be okay. 

_ After tossing and turning for hours, Jack finally falls asleep. He’s in the dreamscape, sitting side-by-side with Bittle. They look at each other, blinking and a little confused, because they’ve never entered the dreamscape next to each other. Usually, they have to walk a short distance to find each other, but right now, Jack is in Bitty’s arms just like they were after the game. They’re still on the endless ice, but they’re even sitting on the same stack of wooden pallets from the loading dock. _

_ Jack pulls back and sees Bitty’s huge eyes, and he gets it. He was too distraught to figure it out right after the game, when Bitty found him on the loading dock, but right now in this dream, he finally gets it. All the puzzle pieces, Jack’s real-world suspicion about his soulmate—everything lines up when he looks into Bittle’s eyes, and he gets it.  _

_ Of course Bitty is his soulmate—he already knows that, at least he does in the dreams—but not in the way he thought. But now he understands. He understands what it means when he feels warmth spread in his chest, or electricity through his veins, or tightness in his stomach. Of course. He already has a platonic best bro in his life: Shitty. Jack’s friendship with Bittle is different. When he’s with Bittle, the world goes quiet. He feels like it’s only the two of them in the whole universe, their presence grounding each other. Bittle makes hours feel like minutes, seconds feel like an eternity. _

_ Right now, Bitty makes time stop. Jack feels frozen in the moment, his eyes searching the way the ice reflects on Bitty’s golden hair, the lithe curve of Bitty’s arms, the long eyelashes that frame Bitty’s wide eyes. Jack takes it all in, each tiny detail, so he can remember everything about this moment. When Jack closes his eyes, everything is quiet.  _

_ When their lips bridge the gap, Jack feels the world zoom back into focus, and then he feels everything. His hand reaches up to hold Bitty’s cheek, and it’s so much more than just warmth or electricity or tightness. He feels fire in his heart, lightning in his veins, air leaving his chest. He feels soft and tender and light, and he feels strength and power and every single centimeter of Bitty’s skin that is pressed against his. He feels—more than any check he’s ever received, more than he has since the overdose, more than anything he’s felt in his life.  _

When Jack wakes up, he doesn’t remember anything from his dream as usual, but his heart feels so light that he barely even remembers the playoffs loss yesterday. He feels okay. He looks at the rays of sunlight streaming through the hotel room window, and in this moment, he feels okay.

_ *** _

Bitty scribbles  _ Stay safe and have fun! ♡ _ on a post-it note and sticks it on a plastic container of fresh chocolate chip cookies. He stacks two boxes in a reusable grocery bag and hands them to Shitty. With a flourish, Jack and Shitty are out the door and piling into Jack’s packed car. Bitty waves from the Haus porch as they pull away from the curb, and then he goes back inside to clean up the mess in the kitchen from his frantic last-minute baking session. 

After losing in the playoffs, the boys gave themselves some time to wallow in their misery. Between Chowder, Bitty, and Shitty, the Haus saw a pretty steady flow of tears; between Shitty, Ransom, and Holster, there was an even steadier flow of cheap beer. But day by day, they started to pick themselves back up, and most people made last-minute plans to take advantage of the now-free spring break. Among those people was Shitty, who loudly proclaimed this morning from the top of the stairs that he and Jack were going on a seniors-only-best-bros-bonding-time camping trip and would be back in an unknown number of days. When Bitty heard the news, he scrambled to prepare baked goods because, well, his boys were going into the wilderness God-knows-where to do God-knows-what and he wanted to make sure they had sustenance. Even though baked goods weren’t exactly high in nutritional content. If he’s being honest, he just wanted Jack to have something to remind him of Bitty. And if he’s being more honest, he knows that Jack can’t resist Bitty’s triple-fudge chocolate chip cookies. 

Bitty walks into the kitchen to start cleaning, but before he can even detach the mixing bowl from its stand, his phone chimes with a text notification. He fishes it out from his back pocket and sees a photo: a selfie taken by Jack, surprisingly enough. Jack is in the forefront, holding a cookie in one hand and smiling, and Shitty is in the back, both hands on the steering wheel, with another cookie haphazardly shoved in his grinning mouth. Bitty reads the message from Jack. 

_ These are so good! You’re the best, Bitty!!  _

Another message pops up on the screen. 

_ Shitty says he’ll marry you if you promise to make him cookies every week. _

Bitty laughs and types out a reply. 

**Well, it’s not like I have other offers on the table ;)**

He sees the three dots appear in a speech bubble, then disappear. They appear again, and Bitty finally gets a reply. 

_ Haha. For real though, thanks.  _

**Of course, only the best for my boys.**

Bitty adds a blushing emoji and a heart emoji and sends the text. He clutches his phone to his chest and suppresses the sting of tears in his eyes. Bitty is playing with fire, letting himself flirt with Jack knowing fully well that their relationship will never be more than a friendship. And Bitty’s happy, he really is. He is so thankful for this friendship with Jack, and the robot hockey prince Jack from Bitty’s freshman year feels so far away. Jack is one of Bitty’s closest friends now, and Bitty would never jeopardize that precious intimacy. But Bitty’s crush on Jack has only intensified since fall quarter, and he knows he’s sliding down a slippery slope. He’s tried to tamp down his feelings, but that only made them grow stronger. So Bitty lets himself flirt a little bit, just once in a while. In moderation. It gets harder every day, but Bitty keeps a tight fist around his heart and tries to control himself so he doesn’t wind up hurting himself. Or hurting Jack. Bitty doesn’t know which scenario would feel worse and vows to make sure he never has to feel either one.

***

Jack and Shitty take turns driving, and by the afternoon, Jack is driving farther away from the city and closer toward the green in the distance. They reach the campsite before the sun sets. When they start setting up all the gear, they realize they forgot to pack the instructions for assembling the tent, but they’re thankfully close enough to town to still have cell service, so they find a video tutorial after a quick search. It’s now past nightfall, and Jack and Shitty are sitting around a campfire. The second box from Bittle was packed with special s’mores cookies, so they shove the cookies onto little sticks and hold them over the fire to melt the marshmallow center. Jack and Shitty talk about anything and everything, from Shitty’s rant about the inherent racism in the U.S. criminal justice system to Jack’s signature method of coming up with horrible dad jokes. Their conversation is occasionally interrupted by beeping from Jack’s phone—text notifications from Bitty—and Jack never waits long before he sends a reply. As the night winds down, Jack and Shitty start reminiscing about their countless Samwell memories together. 

“Brah, remember the first time we met? I literally introduced myself as Byron Schitt like a fucking trust fund baby, and you immediately came up with Shitty. That was genius, bro. It’s like, the core of my identity now.” Shitty holds a fist to his heart and closes his eyes, and Jack looks at him with a deadpan expression.

“Shitty, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on the team right now who knows that the B. in your name stands for Byron.” 

“What? Nah, that can’t be true.” 

“No, I’m pretty sure you were going by Shitty exclusively by sophomore year.” Jack mentally goes down the current SMH roster. “Ransom, Holster, and Lardo are the next-oldest, and they’re a year below us.” 

“Huh. Makes sense. Sophomore year was kind of a wild time for both of us. Dude, remember when you would get so stressed the first year you had the C, and you would just complain across the bathroom at me all night?” 

“Don’t even try to act like you didn’t love every second of it. You were the one who was always trying to force me to talk about my feelings. You would say shit like, ‘Jack, brah, you gotta process your emotions to get in touch with your inner masculinity.’” Jack mimics Shitty’s voice and laughs. 

“Hah! And by the end of the year, lo and behold, you open up about your sexuality and fuckin’ come out to me as bi. You know that shit worked, and that’s why you love me.” Shitty suggestively winks at Jack, and Jack laughs even harder. “Man, you had an ever harder time being captain junior year, though.” 

The laughter dies on Jack’s lips, and his smile turns into a grimace. 

“Jack, I’m gonna be real with you, because you’re my best bro so I know that you know that I love you. But full offense dude, you were a major asswipe to Bitty at the beginning of the year.” 

Jack cringes at Shitty’s bluntness, but he deserves it. “Yeah. Not my finest moment.” 

“I can’t believe you actually dragged Bitty’s sorry ass to Faber every morning for a whole fuckin’ year for extra checking practice. You basically lived, breathed, and ate hockey that whole year.”

“Hey, in my defense, it was the most important year of my pre-NHL career.” 

“Yeah, yeah, we get it Mr. Falconers.” Shitty mocks Jack and rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling. He softens his tone and gets quieter. “It wasn’t just hockey, though, was it? With Bitty last year?” 

“Eh, I think it really was just hockey at the beginning. It was the only thing I could think about during fall quarter. But you all managed to pull the stick out of my ass once the season started, and I chilled out for a bit after that.” 

“Huh. But you still made our Itty Bitty do 4 AM checking practice for the rest of the year?”

Jack shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad toward the end. We got used to waking up early, and it was nice to get coffee together afterward. It’s how we ended up becoming friends, so I don’t regret it.” 

Shitty smiles at Jack and gives a knowing look. “It’s different with Bitty, isn’t it? You guys have a bond that even we don’t have.” 

“Shits, you know you’ll always be my best friend.” Jack pauses, and his voice gets softer. “But you’re right. It’s kind of different with Bitty…” Jack trails off, and neither person says anything for a few minutes. The crackling of the fire cuts through the silence. 

“Um, Shitty…Have you ever heard of soulmates?” 

“Yeah, brah, everyone knows about that shit. You know Lardo’s my soulmate, right?” 

“I don’t think I did, actually.”

“It was kind of awkward when we managed to convince ourselves that we could be romantic soulmates, and we tried to hook up once.” Shitty barks out a laugh. “It wasn’t long before she figured out she was incapable of falling in love with dudes.”

“Haha. Right. Makes sense.” Jack chews on his lip, trying to decide if he wants to tell Shitty about his soulmate. He decides, fuck it, it’s his senior year spring break, and he and Shitty are already being emotional about everything. “I’ve never told anyone this, but I have a soulmate, too.”

“Holy shit, brah. That’s major.” Shitty widens his eyes and leans toward Jack “Do you know who it is?”

“I, um...I don’t know for sure, but I have a pretty solid guess…”

Shitty starts begging like a toddler. “Jack!! You gotta tell me! Please please please please please—” 

“Haha. I will. But only because it’s you.” Shitty sits up straight and gleefully grins. “It’s, ah...it’s Bitty, actually...I think.” 

Shitty tackles Jack and throws his arms around him, and Jack nearly falls over from the impact. “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaack, I fuckin knew it, brah! Didn’t I JUST say that you two have a special bond? Awwwwww Jack I’m so happy for you!” 

“Okay, okay, you can chill out now Shits.” Jack half-heartedly tries to shove Shitty off of his body. “Don’t say anything to him, though. I haven’t told him yet.” 

“Oh damn, why not?” Shitty asks. Jack only shrugs in reply. “I totally thought the two of you already knew. It just made sense, since you’re so close with each other. Like dude, you’ve been texting him every five minutes this whole trip.” 

“It has  _ not _ been every five minutes.” 

“It’s definitely more than I’ve ever seen you text in the four years I’ve known you, brah. You took a selfie when we were driving to send to Bitty, for fuck’s sake. A  _ selfie _ , Jack. I don’t think you even knew what a selfie was in frosh year.”

“Shut up, Shits. I don’t know why I haven’t told him yet.” Jack thinks to himself for a few moments. “I just don’t want to make it weird, I guess. Bitty and I—we’ve come a long way, and I don’t wanna make things more confusing.” Shitty raises an eyebrow at the last part, and Jack continues. “Just because, you know, most soulmates are platonic, like you and Lardo. And me and Bits are platonic. But I don’t want to get Bits’ hopes up, since we’re both…” Jack waves a hand between him and the empty air in front of his chest. “...queer. So it  _ could _ theoretically happen. But I don’t wanna lead him on. Yeah.” 

Shitty props his elbows on his legs and rests his chin on clasped hands. “But brah, does Bitty even know you’re bi?” 

Jack hesitates. “No, he doesn’t… I still haven’t told anyone else at Samwell.” 

“Well, I’m honored to hold this secret of yours.” Shitty places a hand over his heart and winks. “But if Bitty doesn’t know you’re bi, then he wouldn’t even consider the possibility that you’re leading him on, right?”

“I guess you’re right.”

“So what’s stopping you from telling him?”

Jack’s eyebrows knit together, and he frowns. “I don’t know. We have a good thing going on, me and Bitty, and I don’t wanna make it weird. Besides, it’s not like it would change the nature of our relationship, since we’re only platonic soulmates.” 

Shitty leans back and stares into the fire. “Right. Platonic.” 

***

“ONE… TWO… THREE… FOUR… FIVE… SIX… SEVEN… SEVEN… SEVEN… SEVEN… SEVEN...” 

Bitty’s curated  _ EPIKEGSTER 2015  _ playlist pulses through the Haus, but music is currently drowned out by the crowd of intoxicated twenty-something-year-olds chanting in unison. 

Shitty and Jack are side-by-side and upside down, legs suspended in the air by Holster and Ransom respectively, supporting their weight on two separate kegs. When the two finally return their feet to the ground, beer foam spraying everywhere, the crowd stops counting and switches to hollers and choruses of  _ AYYYY _ . Jack and Shitty pull each other into a tight hug, and Lardo supplies them each with a plastic red cup when they pull apart. They raise their cups in the air, and everyone who’s still paying attention—mostly just SMH at this point—mirrors them. Shitty yells, “MOTHER FUCKING CLASS OF TWENTY FUCKING FIFTEEN BABY,” to more rowdy cheering, and they all take a drink. 

Bitty grimaces at the aftertaste of his room-temperature tub juice but regains his composure when Jack walks over, Samwell Hockey t-shirt soaked with beer and clinging against his skin. He leans against the wall next to Bitty, and his eyes are as bright as his smile.

Bitty pokes Jack’s shirt, finger sinking into Jack’s chest. “This is so gross.” 

“What?” Jack half-yells, trying to speak over the noise. 

Bitty stands on his toes, bracing his weight against Jack’s shoulder, to speak into his ear. “I said, THIS IS SO GROSS.” 

Jack throws his head back and laughs before he grabs Bitty around the waist and easily scoops him up, tossing his body over Jack’s broad shoulder, trying to transfer the mess on his shirt onto Bitty. Bitty lets out a shriek and pretends to pound his fists against Jack’s back, trying (but not really) to escape. 

“You’re an ANIMAL! A heathen!!”

Jack relents and releases Bitty, then leans down to talk into Bitty’s ear. “I’m gonna go upstairs to change out of this shirt.” Bitty suppresses a shudder when he feels Jack’s breath on his skin.

“I’ll come with you,” Bitty replies, “My phone’s dead and I need to charge it.” 

“Sounds good. I’m going to grab another drink first.” Jack grabs Bitty’s wrist and drags him through the packed bodies in the Haus dining room-turned-makeshift dance floor; Bitty laughs and follows without resistance. They nod at Chowder, currently on bouncer duty and guarding the residential section of the Haus. Jack and Bitty slip into the kitchen. Bitty pours his now-warm tub juice into the sink and tosses the cup into the recycling bin as Jack grabs two cans of beer from the fridge, their two bodies maneuvering around each other with fluid ease. 

Jack goes to change his shirt, and Bitty goes to plug in his phone. He sits on his bed and waits for the screen to light up, and he quickly gets distracted scrolling through Twitter. In his periphery, he sees movement across the hallway, and his throat goes dry when he looks up and sees Jack, back facing the door, peeling off his soaked shirt. Bitty gulps at the way Jack’s toned muscles shift as he tugs the fabric over his shoulders—it’s nothing Bitty hasn’t seen before, but it  _ is  _ the first time he’s seen it with five drinks in his bloodstream and significantly lowered inhibitions. Jack turns around, and Bitty immediately averts his gaze and intently stares at his phone screen. He doesn’t look back up until he hears Jack clear his throat from the doorway.

Jack hovers at Bitty’s open door, holding two cans of beer, and tilts his head toward Bitty’s desk chair—a silent ask to sit. Bitty kicks the chair out as an answer, and Jack wordlessly sits down and tosses a can at Bitty. Bitty only fumbles a little bit and manages to catch the can, and the  _ hiss _ of popped tabs cuts through the muffled music from downstairs. Jack leans back in the chair and props his bare feet against the edge of the bed. They drink, enjoying each other’s company. 

“How does it feel, knowing this is your last Epikegster?” 

“Weird. Even weirder to think that I voluntarily went to them this year.”

Bitty pushes his foot against Jack’s chair, gently swiveling it back and forth. “I’m glad you came out to them this year, Jack.” A smile ghosts Bitty’s lips. “I never saw you much at kegsters last year.” 

“I didn’t start going until last year, I think. I hated them freshman year, but the upperclassmen managed to drag me to one after our first game of the season.”

Bitty chuckles. “I remember you telling me about that. And they made you do a keg stand, right? Since you scored the first goal?” 

“Yeah…” Jack cocks his head to one side and a tiny wrinkle appears between his eyebrows. “They wouldn’t let me leave until I did.” 

Bitty starts to speak, but he hesitates and closes his mouth. He sharply inhales and tries again. “That was the first time, right?” His voice gets softer. “That you drank after...you know…” 

“Yep. First time I drank after leaving rehab.” The wrinkle between Jack’s eyebrows deepens, and he squints at Bitty. “I don’t think I remember telling you that.” 

“Oh! You must have told me…” Bitty scours through his memory, trying to pinpoint the conversation where he learned this information. He comes up blank. “...I’m not sure when you told me, actually. But I’m sure you did, at some point.” 

***

_ The unfortunate thing about having a dream on the same night as Epikegster is that Jack gets to experience all the unpleasant sensations of his 25-year-old-body processing a hangover. Right now, his head feels like it’s going to split open.  _

_ Bitty is laying flat on the ice, and he groans and rubs his temples. “Please tell me you also feel like absolute garbage right now.”  _

_ “I’m getting too old for this.” Jack sits down. He gently lifts Bitty’s head to rest in his lap without thinking, and the weight of Bitty’s head on his legs is so natural and familiar that it feels as if they’ve been doing this their whole lives.  _

_ “I’m not even 21 yet, and I’m already sick of drinking.” _

_ “How many drinks did you even have, Bittle?” Jack threads his fingers through Bitty’s golden hair, lightly scratching his scalp. _

_ “I remember taking three shots at the pregame, and then a few cups of tub juice at the party.” Bitty counts on his fingers. “Oh! And that beer when we went upstairs.”  _

_ “I only had half as many as you, and I still feel like I’m going to throw up.” _

_ Bitty pokes Jack’s cheek, teasing him. “You and your weak-ass tolerance.” He takes Jack’s hand from his hair, laces their fingers together, and kisses Jack’s knuckles. Jack’s chest tightens at the feather-like touch of Bitty’s lips on his hand, and he can’t resist bending down to press a light kiss to Bitty’s forehead.  _

_ “It’s not my fault my tolerance went to shit.” Jack laughs. “Actually, it technically is, since I had to go clean for three years.”  _

_ “Was it weird earlier? When we were talking about that?”  _

_ Jack resumes playing with Bitty’s hair, and Bitty closes his eyes and hums in contentment. “I was so confused, because I didn’t remember ever telling you that. I must have told you in a dream at some point.” _

_ Bitty nods. “You did. I remember now—it was during a dream after your first game. You were so pissed off.”  _

_ “I thought they were so annoying. I’m glad they grew on me though.”  _

_ “The team or the kegsters?” _

_ Jack glances down to meet Bitty’s eyes and smiles. “Both.” Bitty smiles back, and the warmth in Bittle’s brown eyes makes Jack’s insides melt. _

_ Bitty chews on his bottom lip, hesitating, before he speaks again. “It’s strange that I was able to remember such a specific detail from a dream. Do you think that means we’re close to figuring it out in real life?” _

_ Jack’s hands freeze in Bitty’s hair for a fraction of a second. “Ah. About that…”  _

_ “Mr. Zimmermann, you better not pull some shit on me right now.”  _

_ “Haha. No. It’s nothing like that. I just...may have figured out a while ago, in real life. That you’re my soulmate.”  _

_ “WHAT!? How long have you known!?” _

_ “Um...since last winter?” _

_ “Jack Laurent Zimmermann! Are you telling me that you have known since last winter, and it is now spring quarter in the year of our lord 2015, and you STILL haven’t said anything?” _

_ “I wasn’t sure,” Jack sputters, “and I was scared of messing up our friendship.” _

_ “We’re soulmates, Jack. I don’t think destiny or fate or whatever it is that determines these things would let us mess it up.” Bitty reaches up to brush the fringe out of Jack’s eyes and holds a palm against his cheek, and Jack leans into Bitty’s soft hand. “Besides, this has turned into a little more than just friendship.” Bitty pulls Jack’s head down, and they meet in the middle for a kiss. Even though the touch feels familiar by now, it still makes Jack’s brain shut down for a few seconds. _

_ Jack sighs when they pull apart. “We don’t know that in real life yet, though. We don’t even know we’re soulmates.”  _

_ “And who’s fault is that?” Bitty chirps, eyes twinkling.  _

_ Jack silences Bitty with another kiss. Bitty melts beneath Jack, and Jack gently maneuvers Bitty’s head from his lap onto the ice. He shifts his body so that he’s hovering over Bitty, supporting his weight on one elbow against the ground, one hand cradling the back of Bitty’s head and the other gripping Bitty’s waist. Bitty parts his lips wider and Jack takes the cue to deepen the kiss. Bitty arches to press as much of his body as possible against Jack’s, and Jack can’t stop the moan before it escapes his lips. It activates something in Bitty, and he tangles his fingers in Jack’s hair and pulls Jack down until he’s practically laying on top of Bitty. Jack wants to feel every goddamn inch of Bitty’s body, and from the way Bitty controls the pace, Jack can guess that Bitty is thinking the same thing. Heat rises from Jack’s stomach, and he swings a leg over so he’s straddling Bitty’s slim yet defined body. When the power shifts, Bitty makes a noise of approval in the back of his throat. Jack decides to dedicate the rest of his life to eliciting that sound as much as possible.  _

_ When their lips separate, Bitty whines, but it turns into a whimper when Jack kisses along Bitty’s jaw. When Jack sucks on the soft skin behind Bitty’s ear, Bitty presses his hips against the inside of Jack’s thighs, and Bitty makes a noise that sounds absolutely sinful. Jack grinds his hips down, matching Bitty’s force, and he feels something explode behind his eyes.  _

_ Jack’s mouth moves down the length of Bitty’s neck, pressing sloppy kisses along the way, and Bitty’s entire body shudders when Jack pulls aside the neck of Bitty’s shirt to kiss his exposed shoulder. Jack’s vision begins to fade, but he can’t stop. He hears Bitty’s desperate whisper—“We fucking better figure it out soon.”—Everything starts to get dark—“So we can do this in real life.” _

_ *** _

Bitty tries to not cry, he really does, but he can’t stop a few tears from spilling down his cheeks. He sits on the bench with the rest of the team, and his eyes are locked on the two boys kneeling at the center. He’s too far away to hear what they’re saying, but he can tell that Shitty is crying. Jack and Shitty look at each other and nod, and in perfect synchronization, they both bend over and kiss the ice. The dam breaks, and Bitty cries.

The next few days are a blur of finals and stress baking and meetings with his advisor for his upcoming senior thesis (which he still hasn’t come up with a topic for yet). Next thing he knows, he’s sitting in the Samwell football stadium; he’s currently squished between Lardo, Ransom, Holster, the tadpoles, Bad Bob, Alicia, the Knights, and the grand-Knights. From the stands, they laugh at the graduating seniors’ Wacky Walk group costumes, and they point out their favorites. Lardo is especially excited when she spots a senior wearing a toilet seat around their neck. Bitty laughs along halfheartedly, but he’s mostly looking at the two Samwell-red hockey helmets bobbing down the length of the field. He zones out during the boring speeches, and then Jack and Shitty are crossing the stage, red helmets replaced by those ridiculous graduation caps. 

“Jack Laurent Zimmermann,” the announcer’s voice blares through the stadium speakers, “Bachelor of Arts in History.” 

“Byron Schitt Knight.” Huh. So that’s what the B. in Shitty’s name stood for. “Bachelor of Arts in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Co-terminal Masters in Political Science.” 

Jack and Shitty accept their diplomas, shake some old guy’s hand, and switch their tassels from left to right. Bitty’s eyes have been stinging throughout the whole commencement ceremony, and when the Samwell anthem starts to play and he sees the mass of mortarboards fly into the air, Bitty cries.

***

“You’re heading out soon, aren’t you?” Jack looks down at Bitty, and there’s a sadness in his brown eyes. 

“Oh, I was just about to go back to the Haus before my airport shuttle leaves. But y’all look ready to go?” 

“My mom has a small alum thing first, yeah. Then my parents and George made reservations. And then right down to Providence.”

“Oh well. I guess that’s it, isn’t it?” 

“Yeah.”

Bitty surges forward and throws his arms around Jack. “Bye, Jack,” he whispers into Jack’s shoulder, his voice cracking. 

Jack returns the hug, hands resting on Bitty’s back. “Bye, Bittle. It’s been great playing with you.”

“Jack, I… I…” Bitty hesitates, eyes cast downward, and Jack feels his heart rate pick up as he stares at the top of Bitty’s head. His mind races through all the possibilities of what Bitty might say. Bitty fiddles with Jack’s tie—the one that Bitty picked out for Jack—and Jack barely catches the crack in Bitty’s voice. “I— I guess the next time I’ll see you will be on TV, huh.” Jack feels a twist in his heart.

“What? Bittle, I’ll drive up before the season starts.”

“Oh, of course!” Bitty straightens Jack’s tie for another second, and then steps back. Jack’s chest feels empty when Bitty’s hands leave him. “Well, you get on outta here before you make me late for my flight!”

“Hah. See you, Bittle.” Jack turns to rejoin his parents, but he notices that Bitty’s retreating form is trembling. Bitty’s practically curled in on himself as he walks away, and Jack has seen Bitty cry enough times to know that this is different. He turns, about to call out, but he doesn’t know what to say, and now Bitty is too far away to hear him. It’s too late.

Shitty comes up and claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Hey, brah. One last walk around campus? For old time’s sake?”

Jack and Shitty aimlessly wander around campus, mostly in companionable silence but occasionally recalling memories at specific locations they pass. The Pond where SMH would scrimmage when it froze over in the winter. The ancient stone well that they would pass on the route from the Haus to Jerry’s. The bushes where Shitty and Ransom and Holster once hid in for two hours so they could ambush the Lax bros with water balloons after they got back from practice. Jack and Shitty end up at Faber without intending to, but it feels fitting in a way.

They walk through the familiar hallways and sit in the locker room for a while just to be nostalgic, then they go to the rink itself. The ice is gone—melted for the summer while students are off-campus—and the building feels strange without its usual all-encompassing chill. Jack and Shitty sit on the player’s bench, staring at the empty rink.

“I’m gonna miss this place. Especially seeing the sunrise through those big windows,” Jack mutters, almost to himself.

“Dude, you probably spent more time here than anywhere else on campus.” 

“That’s...probably not true.” Jack frowns to himself. “I spent more time at the Haus.” 

Shitty rolls his eyes. “That doesn’t count and you know it, brah.” He starts to tick off his fingers. “We had two hours of practice every day, and frosh year you would always stay after for a few hours to do drills by yourself because you were intense as shit that year, and then junior year you started doing checking practice with Bitty every day—on top of practice—for God knows how long—”

“It was only two and a half hours,” Jack interjects. 

“TWO and a HALF— Jesus Christ on a cupcake, Jack. That’s longer than  _ practice _ .”

Jack shrugs. “They were fun. Didn’t really notice how long they were.”

“Yeah brah, I’m sure Bitty thought it was fun, too, the first time you dragged his sorry ass out of bed to come here at the butt crack of dawn.”

“God, he complained  _ so much _ at the beginning—”

“Because you made him wake up at 4 AM”

“—but it was worth it. He got better at hockey.”

Shitty looks over at Jack and nudges him in the ribs. “And you got another friend out of it all.”

“Yeah, a great friend.” Jack smiles to himself. “One of my best friends, probably. After you, of course,” he hastily adds. 

Shitty grins. “Don’t worry, homie. We’re best friends forever, but even I can’t compete with a soulmate.”

Jack looks down at his feet. “Hey Shitty, do you think it’s possible for soulmates to be…” Jack hesitates before continuing. “...romantic?”

Shitty’s eyebrows shoot up. “I mean, shit, it’s really rare if I remember correctly, but it’s definitely possible. Jack, are you telling me you have feelings for our Itty Bitty?”

Jack chews on the inside of his cheek. “I think...I might. I don’t know. It’s not like how I felt with Parse—he’s that guy from juniors I had a thing with—but it also feels like...more than friendship? I saw him crying earlier at graduation, and it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I just wanted to comfort him.” 

“Brah, did you just say that you wanted to  _ comfort _ someone?” Shitty lets out a low whistle. “I low-key had a hunch that you had feelings for Bitty, but shit, Jack, I think you might even be in love. No offense, but the second someone mentions  _ emotions _ or whatever, you usually run the fuck out of the room.”

“Euh I don’t know about  _ love _ , but...yeah I think you’re right.” Jack runs a hand through his hair and groans. “What do I do? I haven’t even told him we’re soulmates yet.”

“What the  _ fuck,  _ Jack? You still haven’t told him?”

Jack picks at the chipping paint on the bench. “There was never a good time…”

“You gotta tell Bitty, dude. The soulmates thing, at the very least. But you should tell him about your feelings, too. Gotta be transparent, ya know?”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Chyeah of course I’m right, brah. I usually am.” Shitty throws an arm around Jack and pulls him in a headlock to aggressively mess up his hair. “Where would you be if I wasn’t around to pull your head out of your sorry ass every fucking day?”

“Haha. Thanks, Shitty. For everything.”

Shitty releases Jack, and his face is serious. “I’m always here for you, okay? No matter what, I’ll always be rooting for you.”

Jack smiles at Shitty. “I know, Shits.” 

They leave Faber, and Shitty goes back to the stadium to find his family as Jack walks to the Alumni Center to meet up with his parents. He peeks in and sees that Maman’s event is still happening, so he waits outside and scrolls through Instagram (Bitty had been begging him to make an account for years, and Georgia also thought it was good for Falconers PR.) He lingers on a photo that Bittle posted an hour ago—a selfie of the two of them smiling, Jack still in his cap. He presses the little heart in the bottom corner but doesn’t scroll on to the next post.

“Those alumni events get longer every year!” Jack looks up and sees Papa leaving the Alumni Center and walking toward him. “Your mother will be out soon. Ready to head back to the hotel?” 

“Yeah. Almost.” Jack looks down at his phone. At him and Bitty. “I just uh… I feel like...I haven’t really said goodbye to everyone.”

“Well, it’s a bit too late to take another lap around the rink!”

“No...not that…”

Papa gently places a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Tu sais ce que ton oncle dit toujours. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

“Que veux-tu dire?”

“Je veux dire. Tu devrais aller dire au revoir. Tu ne seras pas ici pendant un certain temps. Si c'est ce que ton coeur te dit, alors tu devrais y aller. Tu devrais vraiment dire au revoir.”

The chiming bells, playing Samwell’s anthem, ring through the air from Founder’s. Jack hears the ringing, and he understands. He knows what he needs to do. “Euh. J’reviens.” He turns and runs.

***

“Hah. See you, Bittle.”

Bitty turns to walk back to the Haus, and he lets the tears fall down his cheeks the second his face is out of Jack’s sight. He doesn’t look back.

When Bitty gets back to the Haus, it’s silent. It feels empty without Shitty running down the stairs in only his underwear, or Ransom and Holster wrestling on the wretched green couch, or Lardo strolling through the door yelling out  _ Sup, nerds,  _ or Jack yelling at Bitty to turn down his music in the shower. Bitty’s chest feels hollow, and his cheeks are still wet, but he’s run out of tears. Bitty goes to the kitchen and starts to pull out flour and sugar, as he always does whenever he’s sad or upset, but then he remembers that there’s no one around to eat pie anyways, and he can’t bring a whole pie on the airplane, so he puts the ingredients back in the cabinet. 

He walks up the stairs to his room and changes out of his suit into a plain hoodie and t-shirt. He then carefully folds his clothes and packs up the rest of his things. When he zips up his suitcase and stands back up, he notices that Jack’s door is still open. Bitty can’t help but peek inside, and when he sees the barren walls and Chowder’s boxes already stacked in the corner, it hits Bitty all over again that  _ Jack is really gone. _

He pulls out his phone to check the time, and he still has fifteen minutes before his airport shuttle arrives. He plugs in his headphones and the first song that plays is Halo, and as soon as he hears the opening piano melody, he’s instantly transported back to Epikegster when Bitty had managed to convince Jack to dance with him to the song. Well, dance was a liberal interpretation of Jack’s off-rhythm head-bopping, but they were still together on that dance floor. Bitty remembers the heat of Jack’s body, the crowded room of party-goers practically pushing them against each other. The way Jack threw his head back and laughed, the tiny crinkles in the corners of his eyes, how it made Bitty feel like he was walking on sunlight. 

Bitty lets the tears fall again.

_ *** _

Jack runs—faster than he’s ever run before—and he has no idea what he’s going to do or even say when he gets back to the Haus. All he knows is  _ he needs to see Bitty right now _ , and he prays that Bitty hasn’t left for the airport yet. Jack barely registers his surroundings blurring by him as he sprints across campus. His feet pound against the asphalt, and he feels like the wind is against his back, pushing him to run faster and faster to get back to Bitty.

When he gets to the Haus, the front door is thankfully unlocked. Jack bursts in and takes the steps two at a time. He can barely breathe, but he manages to call out Bittle’s name as he stumbles into Bitty’s room. Except the room is empty. He’s too late.

Jack hears a quiet sniffle behind him, and when he turns around, he sees Bitty standing in Jack’s old room.

***

_ Remember those walls I built? Well baby, they’re tumbling down. _

_ They didn’t even put up a fight. They didn’t even make a sound. _

Bitty goes into Jack’s room, knowing that it’ll just make Jack’s absence hurt more, but Bitty can’t help himself. He half-hopes to find some trace of Jack still left in the room, but it’s completely empty except for the boxes and Chowder’s laundry thrown haphazardly on the bare mattress. 

_ I found a way to let you in, but I never really had a doubt. _

A few tears roll off his face as he picks up Chowder’s teal Sharks t-shirt, and Bitty reaches up to wipe his cheeks.

_ Standing in the light of your halo, I got my angel now. _

As the last notes of the verse ring out, Bitty hears his name behind him. He whips around, and it’s  _ Jack _ , still wearing his graduation gown, chest heaving and hair sticking to the sweat beading on his forehead, standing right there.

“Hello! Jack? Oh my goodness— Why are— Is everything all right? You’re out of breath! You could have texted—”

“Bitty.”

***

“Bitty.” 

Jack doesn’t know what to say next—He didn’t exactly prepare a speech on his run back to the Haus. Bitty looks up at him with those big brown eyes, wide with confusion. Jack doesn’t know what to say, but he knows what he wants to do. What he needs to do. 

Jack doesn’t hesitate. For once in his life, he doesn’t let himself overthink it or talk himself out of it. He just does what his heart has been screaming at him to do for months.

Jack steps forward and presses a hand against the small of Bitty’s back, and he ghosts his other hand against Bitty’s cheek. And then Jack kisses Bitty.

***

“Bitty.”

Jack cuts off Bitty mid-sentence, and Bitty’s heart starts to race, and Jack steps forward, and then Jack kisses him.

And Bitty’s heart stops.

His mind goes blank, and he melts into the kiss, and it’s even better than all the times Bitty has kissed Jack in his daydreams. It’s soft and tender and sweet, and when they pull apart, Bitty looks into Jack’s bright, shining blue eyes, and he just knows. All the memories of his dreams come flooding into his brain, and he can remember them all perfectly now. It’s Jack. It’s always been Jack.

“It’s you, Bits. It’s always been you.”

“We’re soulmates,” Bitty barely whispers.

Jack brushes his thumb on Bitty’s cheek. “Yeah,” he whispers back.

“You’re—” Bitty remembers a little more. “Wait,  _ JACK LAURENT ZIMMERMAN  _ you’ve known since LAST WINTER and you never told me!?”

Before Jack can reply, Jack’s phone rings and he glances down at the screen. “Shit. It’s my dad. I should probably pick up.” Jack answers the phone in French, and Bitty anxiously waits as Jack finishes the call. 

“Bits, I’m so sorry, but my parents are waiting outside. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.” He pulls Bitty in for another kiss, and it’s deeper and filled with fire this time. Bitty feels Jack pour a thousand unspoken words into him. Too soon, Jack pulls back again.

“I’ll text you, okay?”

Bitty can’t count the thoughts racing through his head, and he numbly hears himself reply, “Okay.” Jack presses a final kiss into Bitty’s hair, and then he’s out the door. Bitty sinks down into the chair next to him, trying to process a single one of his thoughts. He can’t. And then Bitty hears his phone chime.

***

Jack can admit to himself that he doesn’t have the  _ best _ timing, but with the way his chest feels lighter than it has in years, he can’t bring himself to feel bad about it. He did it.

Jack slides into the back of his parents’ rental car and can’t suppress his grin. He looks out the window, Samwell blurring by, and he thinks about the next stage of his life: moving to Providence, playing with the Falconers, and Bitty.

Bitty is in his future now. 

Jack pulls his phone out of his pocket and quickly writes a text. He sends it with a  _ whoosh _ and closes his eyes. 

It’s surreal to think of himself as a Samwell alum now, but he vows to hold on to the memories: meeting Shitty at the first practice freshman year, making Samwell history as the first sophomore captain, making mistakes and learning lessons throughout junior year, getting coffee with Bitty as a senior. Jack used to think that his life would start after college when he joined the NHL, but he knows now that his life started here at Samwell: where Jack met new friends, made a family, and fell in love. And although his time at Samwell has come to a close, Jack is starting a new chapter of his life—a chapter that he gets to spend with Bitty. He’s ready for all his dreams to come true.


	2. epilogue

Jack wakes up from a dreamless sleep feeling grounded and at peace. He rolls on his side and curls his body around Bitty, pulling Bitty in close and feeling his warmth pressed against Jack. Bitty is buried under the thick duvet, his blonde hair poking out the top.

“ ‘s too early. Cold. C’mere.” Bitty grabs and pulls Jack’s arm so that it’s wrapped around Bitty’s waist, and Jack is happy to oblige. He presses a gentle kiss to the back of Bitty’s neck.

“Bits. It’s almost 6:30. We have to start getting ready, or else we’ll be late,” Jack murmurs into Bitty’s skin.

“I don’t wannaaaa,” Bitty whines. He rolls over to face Jack and cracks open his eyes. “It’s still dark out. I’m gonna sue.”

“Who? The Rhode Island weather department?” Bitty squints at Jack’s chirp, and Jack chuckles. “Guess we gotta call Shitty, then, if you’re taking this to court.” Bitty groans and buries his face in the pillow, grumbling, “ _ How  _ are you like this before coffee?”

Jack pokes Bitty’s face. “Come on, Bits. We used to wake up at 4 every day, remember?”

Bitty lifts his head and throws the pillow at Jack. “That was  _ ages _ ago, Jack.”

As Jack reaches over and turns on the bedside lamp as the bedroom door bursts open, light from the hallway spilling into the room, and the sudden brightness makes Bitty shriek. A tiny body crawls onto the bed and bounces up and down, slightly crushing Jack and Bitty’s legs.

“Daddy! Papa! Come look, it’s snowing!”

Jack drags their daughter down into the mattress as Bitty cries out, “It’s too early to be shouting!” She snuggles under the blanket between her two dads.

“First one of the season, Elizabeth,” Jack says as he rubs his morning stubble on his five-year-old’s cheek, making her giggle. “Think they’re gonna cancel school?”

Bitty is already scrolling through his phone. “Looks like it. Nearly two feet of snow overnight. Might even have to close the bakery for the day.”

Jack reaches for his phone and sees a few messages from the Falconers group chat. “They cancelled practice today, too. Roads are completely blocked.”

Elizabeth resumes jumping on the bed, excitedly chanting, “No school! No school! No school!”

Bitty sits up and stretches. “Guess we have a day all to ourselves, then. Jack, can you help Betsy get dressed? I’ll get started on breakfast.” He stands up and pads to the kitchen, and Jack scoops up his daughter and tosses her in the air, easily catching her. 

“Wanna hang out with me for a bit?” Jack asks. Betsy nods, grinning, and runs to the master bathroom to perch on the rim of the bathtub and watch Jack get ready for the morning. She sings through the alphabet twice while Jack brushes his teeth, and another dozen or so times as Jack shaves and washes his face. When he finishes, Jack takes Elizabeth down the hall to her room. Together, they pick out an outfit: track pants (that Jack bought) and a floral-patterned button up (that Bitty bought). Once she’s all dressed, she dashes out and runs up to Bitty in the kitchen, hugging one of his legs.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Bitty says to her without moving his eyes from the stove. He’s smiling, significantly more awake than he was twenty minutes ago. “Go set the table, and I’ll bring these over in a sec.”

Jack stands at the doorway and watches the scene in front of him. Elizabeth takes the stack of plates and utensils from the counter and lays out three place settings, and then she eagerly scrambles into a chair. Bitty walks over, prized cast-iron skillet in hand, and slides two slices of French toast onto each plate. Jack joins them at the table, grabbing the saucepan of compote and leaning down to kiss the crown of Bitty’s head before he slides into his chair. Bitty and Elizabeth excitedly chatter about plans for the day, and Jack hears  _ blanket fort _ and  _ Golden Girls marathon _ as he zones out. 

“Papa! Can we go to The Pond today?”

Jack smiles down at Elizabeth. “You want to go skating?”

“Yeah!” She nods vigorously. “I wanna play some hockey with you and Daddy!”

“Do you want to invite Uncle Poopy, Auntie Lardo, Holster, and Ransom?” Bitty asks Elizabeth.

“Yeah!”

“I’ll give them a call and see if they can come.” Bitty meets Jack’s eyes and reaches across the table to lace their fingers together. Jack thinks about this life that he and Bitty have built together: Jack with his NHL career and Bitty with his bakery and their beautiful family and all their friends.

Even though Jack hasn’t had a single dream in over a decade, it still feels like a dream come true.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I cope with my grief of losing senior spring by living vicariously through the boys? Did I re-create what my graduation was supposed to be like through Jack and Shitty? Did I turn Samwell into my own university and insert obscure references? You bet. So if there are any random details about Samwell in the fic that are canon-divergent, hyper-specific, or don’t make sense, they’re probably unimportant references for my own self-indulgence.
> 
> Also I haven't done any French since high school but I wanted to be extra so....pardon my French? ;_;


End file.
